PDX CYCLING

This might be a fun ride to do in the winter. I'll bet this river looks pretty cool when it is full

Another awesome training ride — in fact, Michele thinks it is one of her favorites of the year. Again, mostly rural with a few exceptions. While it seems pretty flat, there is actually some altitude gain. In the Rubber to the Road book, this ride starts by the Canby Ferry (on the Canby side).

We started from Wilsonville. This adds a few miles and some fun rollers (the fun rollers are a lot more fun on the way out than on the way back). Note the second downhill on the way out, the top bit is extremely steep and you’ll want to come at it with some momentum on the way back. The ride up from the ferry on the Canby side is steep but short.

The ride up on the other side is pretty steep (seems like a sustained 13% grade all the way up). It is probably less than a quarter mile, but it seems longer. The whole thing is very scenic and very nice.

BTW, this is a politically balanced ride. At one point, a sharp left turn drops you onto Liberal Way. You get off Libral Way with a sharp right turn. On the way home, you spend some time on Wright Rd., but shortly thereafter another left turn puts you on Union Mills. You also pass a gun club.

The locals seemed a lot more tolerant of bikes — much more civilized than the folks on other rides just a few miles to the west of this one.

I still get a kick out of the fact that I helped convince Michele to get into cycling and this was the cause of her dropping a 20-year vegitarian habit. Still, the Wendy's hair style is taking it a bit far

Why else would we rename this the Camel Toe ride?

Science, geology, erosion and whatnot

Team Fartlek

No, it's not a "natural break", it's a "nature break"

The Two Ferry Ride is a pleasure. It started pretty close to the worldwide headquarters of KoiFish Communications. It got me to thinking that making a few tweaks would turn this 70 mile jaunt into a century. 45 minutes playing around with Map My Ride and I built a route that is 100 miles on the button. I was thinking of doing the Peach of a Century right after Cycle Oregon, but social commitments will make this unlikely. I think I’ve found a viable option.

This video was shot via helmet cam during the Portland Twilight Criterium. The insight below comes from Robert Burney, a seasoned Portland rider and racer. This gives you a good idea of what it is like to ride — as well as crash — in this type of race.

This video was filmed with a camera attached to the racer’s helmet and shows where is face is looking. The racer has peripheral vision although this camera does not. I am sending this out to everyone to reinforce several ideas we have discussed on our rides:

1.  Ride a straight line, even if you might bump over an obstacle. It is safer for you (and the people near you) if you verbally tell them of the obstacle. We should all pay attention to the road in front of us and steer around obstacles, but we must do so in a controlled manner. Abrupt motions create additional hazards.

You can see what can happen at about 1:20 into the video. At that point someone throws a tennis ball into the pack as they round a right hand corner. Several riders try to dodge the ball and cause a crash on the left side of the road. Had they ignored the ball and ridden a straight line, the crash probably would not have happened.  that crash.

2.  Watch what is happening ahead of you on the road and try to leave an escape route for unforeseen emergencies. At about 3:19 in the video a racer crashes on the left of the screen, ahead of the camera. The rider with the camera does not see it happening in time and has no place to go when a bike flips out into his path. Although the rider crashes (and it may look scary through the camera), he is able to continue the race after a ‘free lap’.  Most of the other riders were also able to continue.

3.  Riders who have crashed should be watched. Note how dazed this rider is for the next few minutes of the video. He even inserts an editorial comment making fun of himself.

4.  Check all equipment after a crash. It is best to have a rider who has not crashed do this for you. This rider forgot to check his rear wheel and it was rubbing the brakes for the rest of the race.

5.  Always wear a helmet. Check to see if the helmet broke in the crash. If the helmet is broken (as was this rider’s helmet), it may be wise to stop the ride and get a lift home.  If there was enough road shock to break the helmet, your brain may have suffered shock causing slowed thinking for a time. Buy a new helmet if yours has taken an impact — helmets are designed to withstand only one crash. Destroy and discard the old helmet.

6.  Look where you are going, not where you are or where you have been. Early in the race the rider is watching where he is riding, but late in the race, when he is very tired (and after he has crashed), he starts to look down at his front wheel. We have all done this sort of thing when we get tired in a pace line or on a climb. When we get tired, our reaction time is worse as well.

Remember that when you look down, you can’t see what is happening ahead of you and it is much harder to react to circumstances you do not see coming.

This is a great video despite the rider crashing.  It gives a great feeling for riding at 28 miles per hour in a pack of riders, plus we get to learn from another person’s mistakes instead of making our own. Mike Sheppard, Darroll Batke, Shari Shanks and I have made all of these mistakes (and more) when we were racing. When we suggest things in our coaching rides it is with the hope that riders will be able to learn better skills (without checking to see for yourself if pavement is still tougher than human skin. Note to self: pavement is still tougher than skin).

Robert, feel free to send stuff like this any time.

Mandatory Bavarian architecture makes for one cheesy downtown, but Leavenworth still kicks ass

Leavenworth, WA is awesome. It sits on the Eastern edge of the Cascades. The downtown is made as silly as possible due to the fact that ALL of the buildings were built using Bavarian building codes. The good news is that the tourons flock there and leave the surrounding areas empty. There is hiking, skiing, river running and biking galore.

For mountain bikers, there are all sorts of trails including some gnarly downhill courses. There is also plenty of road biking to be had. One route I really like goes from downtown up the Chumstick “highway.” It is 9 miles of steady 1%-2% grade climbing followed by another 4 miles of steady 3%-4% grade climbing. From there you can turn around and motor back to town or go over the top of the  climb and drop into the little town of Plain where several other riding options exist.

If you want something mellow, you can stay in town. We stayed at Run of the River — a great little B&B that has bikes you can borrow for a nice, flat, 8 mile loop that features some beautiful scenery. I’m pretty sure you could spend weeks on end riding around this awesome place.

One other nice feature — the Gorge Amphitheater is 60 miles away. It makes Leavenworth a viable place to stay if you are going to see some shows at this amazing venue and don’t feel like camping in the lot. The drive back is a bit tiring, but Leavenworth is a great place to wake up. It is 5-and-a-half hours from Portland, but worth the trip.

The view from the top of this mellow 13 mile climb

Plain Washington is anything but.

The 8 mile loop from our B&B was easy and awesome. Add a climb up Icicle Canyon if you want a workout

The Gorge is a great place to see a show

And a particularly great place to see Phish

Is anyone surprised this was made in Portland?

Cole's shadow always seemed to be keeping perfect pace with Cole

Sauvie Island is a great place to ride a bike. On any given weekend, you’ll find serious riders practicing their time trial or paceline skills as well as lots of people just out enjoying the day. It is close to town yet rural and it is flat.

Our train was runnign so perfectly that the solo rider we blew past latched right on

Today Team Fartlek had an extremely fun ride. We worked on our paceline skills, which isn’t something we do frequently. I’d actually forgotten how enjoyable that can be. It is even more enjoyable when you overtake a solo rider whom you would not otherwise be likely to overtake. This particular solo rider saw how much fun we were having and decided to join us for a few miles.

There is one main loop around the island with a numer of spurs. Two loops around (once clockwise and once clockwise) plus an out and back along the west side of the island to the county line is exactly 40 miles. And in a paceline, that 40 miles goes pretty fast.

Don’t forget to stop along the way to munch on wild blackberries. These taste far better than GU this time of year.

Skyline ends at Dixie Mtn. Rd. Time to turn around

This might be one of my favorite training rides in Portland. It is a nice 30 mile route with enough climbing to count but not so much as it is going to kick your ass. If you want a good workout but don’t want to spend a whole day on the bike, consider this one.

It starts on Skyline at the top of Germantown Road and continues until Skyline — and the pavement — come to an end. After crossing Cornelius Pass, you peel off Skyline for a bit and take Rock Creek Rd. The first mile or so the pavement is all torn up then it gets nice. And then there’s a climb which varies in grade from 6% to 9% for just enough time that you know you’ve been climbing.

You end up back on Skyline and ride rollers to the end of the line — then head back home. It trends down hill to Cornelius Pass. The next half mile is steepish, then you climb back to the car.

Piece of cake.

Not just Lance's coach -- he's now your coach too!

Chris Carmichael is a cycling coach. He isn’t just any cycling coach, he’s Lance Armstrong’s cycling coach.

Chris is part of a pretty cool Nissan Web promotion that features free info from all sorts of experts on different sports.

Chris is the cycling expert and he has a series of video “channels” that focus on all sorts of topics including:

• Skills
• Endurance
• Strength
• Gear

They are short and they are useful. Alas, they can’t be embedded. However, you should check them out.

Bicycle taxi "at your cervix"

I really like Google. More often than not, you put in a decent search query and it gives you highly-relevant results. But sometimes Google can throw you a real curve ball. And sometimes the curve ball is MUCH better than whatever it was you were looking for in the first place.

In this case, it steered me to a blog post about an artist in Helsinki who thinks the world is to penis-centric. In protest she built a bicycle taxi shaped like her mysterious lady parts. Be sure to read the comments to the original post. People trying to out-clever each other with observations. Talk about low-hanging fruit.

Building this bike was a labia of love