Archive for October, 2006
Tuesday: Prospect Mtn (and a century)
Second day off from work. John, Anthony and I planned a climb up Prospect Mountain in Lake George (elevation 2034′, with about 1600′ of climbing).
I got up around 7:30 after Anthony called me and got dressed for the ride. No oatmeal in the house. Phooey. I had to put gas in the car anyway, so off to the Stewart’s down the road for rations and gas. Grabbed a couple of PowerBars for the ride while I was there–got home and realized I forgot to get the gas. So back out I go for gas.
Once Anthony arrive and suited up we set out to meet John on route on West River Road. This saved us a little time. The ride out to the base of Prospect took about 30 miles and we took it pretty easy. North on West River Road, north on Fort Edward Road, cross the bridge and into the glorious metropolis of Glens Falls. After a couple zigs and zags, it was onto the bike path. Now they have a very nice bike path that I’d recommend to anyone looking for smooth pavement, interesting terrain, and the occasional bridge over traffic. 
Kinda makes you feel important that they actually built a bridge over the traffic–not like the second class citizen walkers and cyclists seem to forever relegated. One of the interesting sights is of the water tube rides at Water Slide World. (A note about their website… they don’t have their own domain name, and their design looks like it was done around 1995.) 
The only hesitation I had about the path was that it was strewn with the leaves of autumn. Beautiful perhaps, but it forced us to be more careful and slow down a tad for fear of sliding on the (sometimes wet) leaves.
We paused at the Stewart’s next to the entrance, had a snack and refilled the bottles. This was my first time climbing Prospect and aside from more seatpost problems it went quite well. 
Since the road is closed part of the year (starting two days ago) we have to jump the gates. The gates are large metal constructions with bike-sized holes in them. Very convenient. The second gate was just a modest two-foot high jobby we could almost bunny-hop without even getting off.
Here is some history for Prospect Mountain. And here are a couple of pics.
The descent was awesome if a bit bone-chilling. Letting the sweat cool on you for several minutes while taking in the sights is inevitable. We were commenting afterwards that all the curves on the descent were gentle enough to not require much/if any braking.
We swung by Fort William Henry on the way back to add a little history to our tour. In Glens Falls, Davidson Bros. called to us and we had some delicious sandwiches to fill some mountain-sized hungers. My sandwich had coleslaw in it… I’m a sucker for sandwiches with coleslaw as an ingredient. (Another note about another website, their website is barely better than Water Slide Worlds’. At least they have their own domain name.)
Back on the road, John asked me how far Anthony and I were going. I said we’d probably peel off on Peters Road, the same way we came. (I swear, Anthony, I was originally thinking this!) But then thought, well, we could see you (John) all the way home and get some more miles in since neither A. nor I had time committments. One thing led to another and we ended up rounding out the ride to an even 100. Sorry, Anthony, if I dragged you further than you had planned for the day. Hope you didn’t mind. Anthony ended up with 249 miles for the 4-day weekend, and I garnered 190 (not sure what John had).
Elevation profile
Statistics
Distance: 100 miles
Elevation gained: 5161′ (which doesn’t seem right… John, what did your Garmin get?)
Uphill time: 2:24
Downhill time: 1:42
Flat time: 3:28
Uphill distance: 20.45 miles
Downhill distance: 25.66
Flat distance: 52.68
Uphill grade: 5.3%
Avg/max heart rate: 148/182 (although I frequently forgot to pause it while on breaks, so it’s lower than it should be)
Number of e-mails from work since Friday 5pm (as of Wednesday 8am): 242
Difficulty index: 28.88
Effort index: 121.05
What’s this difficulty and effort index thingy? Basically the guy who wrote the TopoFusion software that I’m getting these numbers from came up with arbitrary formulas as a way of comparing hiking/cycling GPS tracks to each other.
Photos courtesy of my crapcam.
Monday: Riding in Ravena
A couple weeks ago Anthony said he had the opportunity to get Monday and Tuesday off and wondered if anyone was interested in some weekday riding. Well, I threw my hand up and said, “Sure, I’ll take a couple days off… I’ve got some bonus days I haven’t used yet.” Initially we had grand aspirations for maybe back-to-back centuries, or massive climbing, or some such craziness.
Today we rode 56. It felt about right.
We certainly could have done more, but we were tempting the weather gods as it was–the skies were ominous and threatening, though never cast their rainy gaze upon us. We did feel a few drops, as though the clouds were flexing their muscles and getting ready for walloping us tomorrow. The temperature never seemed to feel right–that is, it felt warmer than it actually was, a cloudy and very windy 45 degrees. The wind also didn’t seem to adversely affect our performance either. Weird. But in a good way.
Not more than 2 or 3 miles out, a church-goer cuts us off on 9W. Great. Sometimes I wish I could just do a controlled body slam into an idiot cutting me off. Go for a good dent in a body panel. I’d keep the car-side pedal high and try to grind the paint. Maybe even carry some fake blood with me and splash it about for added effect. (pausing to daydream…) I mentioned this to Steph and she said that it wouldn’t work ’cause the people who cut us off don’t care about cyclists to begin with and would think it was my fault for hitting them regardless of whatever boneheaded maneuver they pulled. She’s probably right. Plus, now that I’ve written about this right here, it wouldn’t be too good if I actually DID get into a situation like that what with me premeditating my car attack. You lawyers out there know I’m joking, right?
Anthony innocently e-mailed me and said that without excessive planning and lots of backtracking, we wouldn’t be able to have a “truly flat course.” I replied and said that “truly flat” certainly wasn’t necessary. Little did I know, he plotted a course that had us climb such a whopper that I regretted ever forcing Ormsbee on him. This was my penitence. Check out the spike on that profile. You could kill a good-sized vampire on that spike. And maybe some little baby-vampires on the mini spikes in the second half.
After the climbing, I noticed I was sitting on a low-rider again. Damn. Seatpost is sliding down. Pulled over and adjusted it. A couple miles later, same thing. This time Anthony MacGyvered a solution for me out of a used PowerBar gel wrapper, a clothespin and some duct tape. Well, OK, only the PowerBar wrapper. This worked well for the remainder of the ride. (I’m taking the faithful carbon steed to the shop Thursday after work for a major tune-up and hopefully a seatpost solution.)
Now, let me break for a minute and talk about audio books. I love listening to audio books. I’ve listed to well over a hundred, probably close to 200 (thanks to my years at the bookstore). The one I’m listening to now is by Tami Hoag, Kill the Messenger. (And, by the way, my cell phone accidentally introduced Anthony to this audio book. Bad cell phone, bad! Don’t dial unless I want you to dial!) It’s about a bike messenger in LA who gets tangled in a murder mystery. Pretty good so far. However, it suffers from a flaw I’ve come to despise. Not the story, mind you, but the production itself. It doesn’t have any audible cues when the disc is complete. My car stereo just innocently loops back to the beginning like every other car stereo on the planet and repeats. Unfortunately my car stereo is very new and apparently doesn’t suffer from any lag time when re-cueing to the beginning from the end and nary a beat is skipped in the reader’s dialog. Several minutes go by before I notice “Hey, I’ve already heard this! Smeg! Frak!” So out comes the disc and in goes the next one. Listening to disc two, I start thinking, “Wow, this story really moves along.” A lot has happened quickly. On the ride home from Anthony’s disc two finishes and I open the case looking for #3. Oops. Turns out I was listening to disc FOUR! Balls. The CD case is a flip-out kinda thingy and I didn’t pay close attention while I was driving to the actual number printed on the sleeve or on the disc itself. Aargh!
Now, I don’t want to get off on a rant here, but…
Anyway, before I digress too much and loose my readers (I know, it’s too late), we finished our ride safely, no more close calls unless you want to consider the dachshund and pekinese barking at us from behind their chainlink fence a threat. My host treated me to some hot chocolate and a delicious slice of cake.
I head home and pick up Steph from work. We head to Panera’s for dinner–and, I get a yummy Tomato and Basil Crispani pizza. I pound that down and notice a group of three sitting nearby with two crispanis. They don’t finish them, but take the leftovers home in a box. How can they NOT finish two lousy crispanis? I could still go for another couple slices. Oh well. They must have read the nutritional content on the Panera website (using Panera’s free wifi, no doubt) and learned that one pizza is actually TWO servings and contains 840 calories, 40 mg of cholesterol, 32 grams of fat and a third of my daily allowance of sodium.
Statistics
Distance: 56.7 miles
Avg speed: 13.1 mph
Total climbing: 2631′
Uphill time: 1:32
Downhill time: 58
Flat time: 1:37
Uphill distance: 14.25
Downhill distance: 15.74
Flat distance: 26.67
Uphill grade: 3.6%
Downhill grade: 2.9%
Difficulty index: 13.44
Effort index: 60.56
For comparison, the Difficulty index and Effort index of two other recent rides:
A little 40 miler around my in-laws’ house in Round Lake:
Difficulty index: 7.95
Effort index: 48.1
The ADK540:
Difficulty index: 44.20
Effort index: 233.60
Sacandanga in the Fall
Yesterday was a full day. A very hilly sixty miler in the day and birthday dinner celebration at night.
The Annual Sacandaga ride lead by Henry is one of my favorite casual group rides of the year. It takes place during brilliant fall foliage and is on some of my favorite roads around Sacandaga Lake. It’s about a 30 mile drive to the start from my house and the quickest way is to go over the great climb, Lake Desolation. 
It was relatively cold in the lower 50s–I couldn’t find my loose tights so rode with just the biking shorts on the bottom. Up top I had full cycling kit including base layer, jersey, jacket, neck gaitor and skull cap under the helmet. Toe tips and heatpacks in the shoes rounded out the ensemble just in case. I was comfortable for nearly the whole ride until the last half hour when the clouds rudely obscured the sun.
The usual suspects showed up with the added bonus of John on his shiny new Jamis frame. The crowd was a respectable 15 or so in size divided roughly into a tour group and quick ride group (42 and 60 miles respectively). The quick ride included two climbs the tour didn’t get, Hadley Hill Rd and Glasshouse Rd. Three significant climbs for the ride and countless rollers even along the top of the ridgeline made this a more difficult ride than many centuries I’ve ridden. Average heartrate: 163.
Somehow the seatpost minder moved, so I had the seatpost at the wrong height. Ten miles in I realized I was pedaling a low-rider and made a quick adjustment at brief stop on the corner by the convenience store at the north end of the Batchelorville Bridge. While humming along on South Shore Road with the only tail-wind of the day, John and I were surprised to see the group get stretched out so much even before we reached the long climb of West Mountain Rd.
The western climb up West Mountain road is gradual and easily digestible. The southeastern side, the side Heather and Co. climb on her Sweat ‘n series centuries, is significantly tougher. I climbed it once and ended up with a DNF my one and only time on a century many moons ago. The climbs, according the the webmhcc.org website are West Mountain Rd (4.5 miles 3%), Hadley Mountain Road (6 miles 3.5%) and Glass House Rd (1 mile 4.5%). Notice they got progressively steeper as the ride wore on? Nice.
I picked up a crapcam at WalMart this week to bring on rides. The quality is almost better than the horrible pictures my camera phone took. It toped off at 25 VGA photos. The photos in this post are from that camera. Gotta hack that CVS camera I got this spring.
Some facts about the Great Sacandaga Lake
The bridge is 3,100′ long and 42′ high. There are two sides to the issue of bridge height: those that want it higher, at 55′ for sailboats, and those that want it lower at 35′.- Construction of the Conklingville Dam started in the 1920s and was completed on March 27, 1930.
- Surface area of the lake: 42 square miles
- Shore line: 125 miles
- Water capacity: 37.75 billion cubic feet
- Conklingville Dam completed: 1930
- Total cost to build the dam: $12,000,000
Things I noticed
- Lots of orange and black fuzzy caterpillars.
- I was warmer than one would expect given the forecast and temperature. There’s a lot to be said for brilliant sun on a cool day.
- In spite of that, my left quad was giving me lip and threatening to crap in the last 15 miles. This was the first time I actually noticed visual signs of said pre-cramping on the top of my leg.
- Using the lanyard with the crapcam around my neck was ideal for quick access and quick picture taking. I remember seeing a rider on a brevet this spring with a cue sheet in a plastic sleeve on a lanyard around his neck. Good tip.
- The bonhomie is comforting at the end of the ride.
- The Adirondack Steak I had at the Dakota Restaurant in Latham that evening hit the spot!
