ChrisCowan.us

One of the hardest things about being a husband, father, young (is 35 still young?) professional and cyclist is finding time to squeeze in a good mountain bike ride. I found the only way to accomplish this is to get up at the butt crack of dawn and hit the trails.

Even harder is to sucker some other poor souls into meeting you for an early morning ride. But when you throw in the promise of some prime “ranger-free” singletrack and breath taking views it makes it a bit easier.

With those two benefits, I’ve finally suckered Patrick and Joe into joining me for my morning Dawn Patrol Ride at Saratoga Gap. We all agree it’s really hard to pry yourself out of a comfortable bed but when we hit the spot in the photo above, it’s totally worth it.

Being the first to ride a trail in the morning is pretty satisfying, it’s comforting to know that you can rail that twisty section without worrying about another rider coming the other way. The only real risk is hitting wild life loitering in the middle of the trail (what are they thinking? Get out of the way Bambi! Jeeez!)

Yesterday while climbing out of Peter’s Loop, I mentioned to Joe and Patrick that I was considering putting forth my entry for the “Specialized Trail Crew” contest. I explained how I thought it would be interesting to focus my blog a bit more and open up a wider forum for discussing my three passions: riding, advocacy and technology. They unanimously thought it was a cool idea, Pweew!… just the validation I needed.

One interesting angle would be to see how much money I could raise for my cause on Plus 3 Network using the bike Specialized would graciously loan to me for a year. As an added bonus I’ve even plotted a route from my new apartment to work that is off-road almost the entire way.

Keep your fingers crossed… Here are the stats from yesterday’s ride.

• Distance: 9.44
• Money Raised: $0.57 (for Project Rwanda)
• Calories: 1442
• Elevation: 1804
• Full Ride Report

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(I actually rode 13 miles today but I forgot to hit the start button on my GPS till we got to Peter’s Loop… Doah!)

Update: Patrick just sent me this photo… ha!

This morning when I was returning home on my morning road ride I was passed by a guy wearing a full Google Kit. As he passed me he gave me a nod and smile, since I’m a Yahoo! I couldn’t let this Googler get away with that, so I got on to his wheel and drafted a bit.

My plan was to attack him at the Sunnyvale city limit (which if you don’t know city limits are always sprint points on road rides). About 100 feet before we hit the point which I was going to mount my attack I noticed he was wiggling his left elbow and looking back at me.

Hey! I’ve seen that move before, that’s an invitation to take a pull up front. So as any honorable cyclist would do I accelerated enough to overtake him and take my turn up front. I focused on pedaling at a good even tempo (not dropping the hammer) just enough to pick the pace up a bit and say “I’m game!”

After about 3 minutes I relaxed, wiggled my left elbow and glanced back relinquishing my pull. The Googler speed up enough to over take me and I fell back inline on his wheel. We played this hopscotch game for about 3 miles till my turn off point. Since I knew I was turning off I took an extra long pull and then yelled at the end, “Thanks for the pulls!” He responded with the same enthusiasm “you too!”

This is one of the many reasons I love cycling, two strangers working together against the wind. The only thing that would have made it more beautiful is if I was wearing my Yahoo! jersey.

This morning I woke up with a mission, a ride to the top of South Mountain and work up a huge appetite for Thanksgiving dinner. Last year I had already stopped riding by this time of year and I ended eating so much food that I eventually got sick, gluttony at it’s finest.

Here are a few crappy photos from my ride (via iPhone)…

• Distance: 42.11
• Elevation: +2473 ft / -2457 ft
• Calories: 3204
• Moving Time: 02:48′30
• View full rides stats

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PS… Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

I’ve decided to take the last couple day off the bike to give my knees a chance to rest. My knee issues seem to be a result of pushing too high of gears on my climbs. This all started a few months back when I had the bright idea of try to break my personal record up Old La Honda.

My strategy was to try and stand up out of the saddle on my climbs, recover and then repeat. I’ve also been encountering really steep off road climbs using my 1×9 setup. After my mixed terrain rides my knees were usually really sore for a few days. Top things off, I don’t know how to do an  easy recovery ride so I would follow those rides up with some heavy climbing and record breaking attempts up Old La Honda.

I had this arbitrary goal of trying to get faster this year but I’ve come to realize in the last couple of weeks that fun is more important then faster. For the next couple of weeks I’m going to be focusing on spinning higher RPM’s and taking it easy to give my knees a chance to heal and recover. If you see me at a stop light or pass me on the flats don’t expect me to give chase (since we all know every stop light is the starting line and getting passed is a challenge to race).

This morning I woke up early to go riding on my new setup. I figured instead of beating around the bush by riding a tame road ride and breaking in the flat pedals, I would hit one of my mixed terrain routes. I decided to do the Canyon Trail up to Page Mill. 

I figured it presented several different scenarios for testing out the pedals: road climbs, steep off-road climbs, off-road descents, some minor off-road technical sections and a nice technical road descent. That way I could truly get a feel for how the pedals perform in different conditions. 

On the road, I was able to maintain a normal pedal cadence without having my feet fly off the pedals on the backstroke (no big surprise really). I also noticed that once I started pedaling I would move my foot around till I found the sweet spot and then settled into a really nice cadence. My sweet spot was having the balls of my feet over the axel. I’m not sure if the lateral positions was exactly the same but when I got my foot there I knew it.

Normally when I come to a stop sign I take my left foot off the pedals and leave my right foot at the dead bottom center. With clipless pedals I would just pull my right foot up when the light turned green and give a big pedal stroke to start rolling while I clicked the left foot in. With the platform pedals I had to change my stopping habit by leaving my right pedal at the top of the stroke when I got to the light. Not a big deal since it all I had to do with my left pedal was put my foot down. It was nice not to have to fumble with my pedals when starting off at a light, I just started pedaling.

One problem I thought I would encounter was on short steep off-road climbs. Normally I would get out of the saddle at the last part of the climb and pull on the pedals to get over the top. I figured if anytime my feet would accidently fly off the pedals was during these short steep climbs. Evidently I really wasn’t pulling as much as I though I was because I did the same climbs using the same technique and my feet stayed on the pedals.

I have to admit my feet did lift off the pedals twice. Once when I tried to do a jump and the other time was when I was flying over a wash board bumpy section trying to do a really high cadence because I was in the wrong gears. They didn’t fly off but I could feel them losing some traction on the pedals. The jump was because I really suck at jumping and bunny hoping. 

So what do the numbers say? Well my last ride on the same route with clipless pedals I did a 13.1 mph average, on this ride I did a 13.5 mph average. So slightly faster but that’s probably due to the fact that I had more energy and I was excited to be trying something new. This only really proves that I can maintain almost the same pace as I did with the clipless pedals. My average and max heart rate was 1 bpm higher too.

I would say that there isn’t a really significant difference in the data and that had I not mentioned it you wouldn’t even know I had changed a thing.  Here is links to the rides for your comparison:

Canyon Trail Cyclocross (w/flat pedals) vs Canyon Trail Cycloross Adventure

I was going to take a bunch of photos today but I left the house without my camera battery so here are a few snaps off my iPhone.

Here is a panoramic shot I did with the help of Photoshop (click to see the larger version).

When I was coming down Page Mill it was really foggy which made for a really tricky descent.

Ride Stats:

• Distance: 41.37 Miles
• Elevation Gain: +3703 ft / -3707 ft
• Calories Burned: 4159
• Total Time: 03:24′17
• Moving Time: 03:07′19
• View full stats

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