Passion

Cycling is a passion, or rather, it can become one. Many people ride a bike, not all of them can be described as passionate about it. Passion is one of those words that is not easy to explain, one has to experience passion to know what it truly is.

Cycling becomes a passion when someone rides a bike for no other reason than to experience the joy of riding a bike. If you have a passion for something in life, you are truly living. Without passion, a person is simply existing.

People who say, “Cyclists should not be on the road because it is dangerous,” just don’t get it. It is like telling a surfer it is dangerous to go into the ocean because of shark attacks, the surfer who is passionate about surfing is not going to stop.

It is not that cyclists and surfers are crazy, foolhardy, with little regard for their life. In fact, the opposite is true. If one has a passion for life, the last thing that person wants is to end it. On the other hand, if one cannot engage in their passion, they are no longer living anyway. Life becomes a pointless existence. 

Passion can include anger, especially if someone suggests I should not pursue my passion, which happens to be riding my bike on the road. It is a road bike after all, and just as a surfer must surf in the ocean, a road bike must be ridden on the road. 

Some will say, “You have a local bike path, why don’t you ride there?” Yes I am fortunate to have a paved Walk and Bike Trail just two miles from my home. It is 7 miles long, so 14 miles out and home. But after riding it several times during the week, the monotony has got me itching to get out on the open road, and actually go somewhere.

On weekends I pick quiet country roads to ride where there is very little motorized traffic, and actually I prefer to deal with a few cars and trucks over the dog walkers and runners on the shared path.

Of course, they have a right to be there too, so I am not complaining. Some of them may be are following their own passion. 

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The Wave

A wave of the hand has to be one of the most simple and yet basic of human gestures.

A wave can say, “Hi,” or it can say, Thank you.” 

Most important a wave to a stranger is saying, “I acknowledge your existence, I am not ignoring you.”

The wave immediately says, “I am friendly towards you.” Even the most hostile and aggressive of drivers, will give another driver a thank you wave, if they slow and let them in. 

In fact if you don’t get a thank you wave, you feel slightly offended, somehow deprived, “Hey, I let you in and I didn’t get a thank you wave, where’s my thank you wave?”

Some cyclists will not return a wave to another cyclist, or will not do so unless they are wearing Lycra like them. Total bull-shit. I know it must be terribly hard if you are lying down comfortably on those aero bars, to struggle up to give a proper wave, but at least raise a hand, make the effort.

Unless you are a serious time-trialist, or tri-athlete, it might be a good excuse to dump the aero bars. Set yourself free to sit up and wave to the whole world.

I wave to everybody when I am riding, not just people who look like me, other people on any kind of a bike, those walking, running, or on skate-boards.

Even ladies pushing babies in strollers. They are all people like me, out getting some fresh air, and exercise. Sometimes, I get a wave back but not always, I don’t feel deprived or offended if I don’t. 

If I see a driver waiting to turn in front of me, or pull out from a side road, I give a wave. This time it is more of an attention getter, “See me, I’m over here.” Rather like the wave to a waiter in a busy restaurant.

However, it is still a friendly gesture, and the driver may interpret it as, “Thank you for waiting, and not pulling in front of me. Often they will wave back, which is very nice. It means they have seen me, but more important they acknowledge my existence, and my right to be on the road.

A wave costs me nothing, and yet it gives so much. It gives me a great deal of satisfaction and pleasure, makes my ride a better experience.

If you are not in the habit of waving, I can recommend it. It is good for the soul, yours and your fellow travelers.

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A time machine, or a timeless machine

It is no secret that I am up in years, it has been sixty-five years  since I got my first lightweight racing bike.

There have been periods when I did not ride on a regular basis, usually due to the pressures of running a business.

But I always came back, and when I did, my body remebered. It knew exaxtly what to expect.

Cycling is one of my many passions in life. We need passions, it is what keeps us truly alive.

I do not feel my age, especially when I am riding my bike (Whatever my age is supposed to feel like.) I feel no different than when I rode a bike at age twenty or thirty something.

These days I ride for the pure joy and feeling of freedom it gives me. There is no pressure to go fast or push myself to the point of exhaustion. I have nothing left that I need to prove, to myself or anyone else.

Greg LeMond was once asked,

“At what point does climbing hills become easy?” His reply was, “It never gets easier, you just go faster.”

So I guess the reverse is true in my case. I know by my time for any given distance that I am not riding as fast as I did some fifty years ago, but it feels the same in my legs and the rest of my body.

Only another bike rider could know the feeling of getting out of the saddle and stomping on the pedals. The immediate response from the machine as the rubber bites into the asphalt and the bike rockets forward.

The bicycle becomes an extension of the rider, man and machine become one. The closest thing to human flight without actually leaving the ground. There is no other feeling quite like it.

Riding a road bike is, in a way, is a spiritual experience. My mind is totally in the moment, concentrating solely on the job in hand. My thoughts are only on the physical effort of propelling the bike forward, and on steering a course on the road ahead.

Other times of the day, if I am not careful, I may slip out of the moment and find my thoughts in the past or in the future. An often futile exercise, as both past and future are only in my mind. Only the present or the moment is real.

Negative thoughts are always in the past or future, remembered or imagined. If I am in the moment there cannot be negative thoughts. A three hour bike ride means three hours of mental refreshment. It would take extreme concentration to achieve that by meditation or some like method.

So my bike is a time machine in that it takes me back to a feeling I experienced 50 years ago and before. And it is a timeless machine in that it keeps me focused in the moment.

All that, and I’m getting the best possible physical exercise at the same time.

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Exercising to lose weight

Back in September 2007 I wrote an article called Running vs. Cycling: Calories Burned. This one article is by far my most successful in terms of daily hits from search engines. It gets hundreds of hits every single day, from Google and others. It is obviously sought after information by people looking to burn calories by exercising in order to lose weight.

My attention was drawn to the article yesterday when a friend emailed me that he burned 650 calories in one hour on his stationary bike and asked how many miles he had traveled. I’m not sure if he was “Yanking my Chain,” or “Pulling my Plonker,” as we Brits sometimes say, but I told him he had traveled Zero miles as it was a stationary bike.

Returning to the article, it states that running burns 110 calories per mile at any speed. The reason being it is distance covered, not time taken to complete the distance. One man runs a mile in 6 minutes and he burns 110 calories in 6 minutes. Another takes 12 minutes to run the same mile and burns 55 calories in the first 6 minutes and another 55 calories in the second 6 minutes. Both runners burn the same 110 calories for the same distance.

It was agreed upon in the discussion that followed the article that 110 calories burned was for someone around 150lbs. anyone heavier would burn more calories, someone lighter would burn less. I have seen this figure of 110 calories quoted in articles over and over again, and even seen it stated that walking burns the same 110 calories per mile.

At first glance this seems logical. You are hauling the same 150 lb. body over the same mile, it just takes longer. Twenty minutes walking, burning 5.5 calories per minute, equals the same 110 calories for the mile. Or does it?

I recently read this article in Runners World, and I feel it contains information that is far more reliable. The article explains that any exercise burns 5 calories per Liter of Oxygen consumed. Obviously a person consumes far more oxygen when running than walking.  

The reason being, with each stride, the runner actually jumps into the air, overcoming gravity as well as driving himself forward. Then there is the impact of hitting the ground again with each stride, using energy to absorb the shock.

The average calorie burn (Per mile.) given in this article is 124 for a man running, and 88 calories walking. For a woman, because of the lighter weight, the average is 105 calories burned running, 74 walking.

However, the article makes a very important point when it states that when looking at exercise as a means to lose weight, one must take into account the Net Calories Burned (NCB) and not the above figures which are Total Calories Burned (TCB)

It is a little like a person saying he makes $50.000 or $100,000 per year as an income. This is his Total Income, his Net Income after taxes is less.

The “Tax” when it comes to burning calories, is a little thing called Resting Metabolic Rate. (RMR) This is the calories burned every single day if you do absolutely nothing, even if you lay in bed or sit on the sofa.

Some people talk of Basil Metabolic Rate, (BMR) which is a more accurate reading. Both are calculated, and RMR is close enough for most people. Here is a calculator.

Let’s say a person has a RMR of 1,500 calories. That means this person burns 1,500 calories every day doing absolutely nothing. Divide this by 24 hours. 1,500 divide by 24 equals 62.5 calories burned per hour. So if this same person walks 3 miles in one hour he burns 88 x 3 = 264 TCB. However, he must deduct the 62.5 calories he would have burned if he had stayed home and watched TV. His NCB is now 201.5.

Another man could run 6 miles in one hour and burn 124 x 6 = 774 TCB. Take away 62.5 for a total of 681.5 NCB. The runner has covered twice the distance and burned well over three times the calories in the same hour, over the man who walked. The more intense the exercise the more calories burned for the same amount of time.

This same principal applies to cycling, and explains why some cyclists who ride a lot of miles still carry extra weight.

Cycling does have an added bonus, in that the faster you ride the more calories you burn, because wind resistance comes into play.

The chart that was in my original article is as good as anything if come across since. (See above left)

Let’s say our same subject with the 1,500 RMR, rides his bike 100 miles at a leisurely 10mph. He burns 26 calories a mile for a TCB of 2,600. Minus 625 calories he would have burned if he had stayed home for the 10 hours. (62.5 x 10.) His NCB is 1,975.

Now let’s say the same man rides 60miles at 20mph, an intense 3 hour ride. His TCB is 2,280 (60m. x 38 calories per mile.) Minus 3hr. x 62.5 calories, for a NCB of 2,092.5. So the intense 60 mile ride burned more calories than the leisurely century.

As you search the Internet you will find calorie charts and metabolic calculators that vary immensely. However, used as comparison tools they will serve to determine which form of exercise will work best to lose weight. It is quite simple really, shorter, intense workouts and eat less.

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The Silver State 508.

Regular readers of this blog will have no doubt noticed the ad in the right hand column of this blog, for the Silver State 508, some of you may have even clicked on it to find out more.

This tough ultra-marathon 508 mile bike race with a cut-off time of 48 hours, has been successfully run using four different courses for the last 31 years.

The race started in 1983 when it was first run on a 102 mile loop in the Hemet area, a little town in the Southern California desert, southeast of Los Angeles. Three years later the race moved to Arizona and was run on an out-and-home course from Tucson to Flagstaff and back.

In 1989 in search of safer and quieter roads, the event became the Furnace Creek 508, and was run for the next 24 years on a route from Santa Clarita, California, through Death Valley to Twenty Nine Palms. The race would still been there to this day had not a brand new Death Valley Park Superintendent taken over.

This new DV Parks Chief would soon put a stop to this nonsense of people running and riding bikes through Death Valley, someone might die. After all, it is called “Death” Valley…. Duh.

Actually, people died in the past because they were on foot and ran out of water. Cyclists and runners know to drink water, and have helpers to make sure they have a good supply. Don’t you just love these politicians who take over and decide we need to be protected from ourselves?

In spite of the organizers having the support of the California Highway Patrol, and the Death Valley, and Lone Pine Chambers of Commerce, and Congressman Paul Cook, their pleas to continue on this course fell on blindfolded ears.

And so the race became the Silver State 508, (A nice ring.) The Silver State being Nevada. This year’s race was moved to yet another classic America Frontier Region, and was held on the quiet Northern roads of that State.

Held this year on October 5 – 7, on an out-and-home course starting and finishing in Reno. The event drew 141 riders from 16 American States, plus Canada, Italy, Mexico, Philippines, Slovenia, and Switzerland. Next year, Adventure Corps, the organizers are hoping for an even bigger entry.

The 2015 event will be held 2 weeks earlier, September 19 - 21, it is hoped that some of the chilling desert night temperatures will be a little higher. The race is in the form of a time-trial.

If you have ever thought about trying one of these Ultra-Marathon events, Adventure Corps also puts on a 308 mile event, with a 24 hour qualifying time, held at the end of May. In fact for rookies, finishing the 308 is one if the best credentials to have for acceptance to ride the 508. They also have Century, and Double-Century Rides.

If the 24 hour and 48 hour qualifying times seem generous, bear in mind that both these events take in some serious mountain climbing. Some reaching over 7.000 feet. Check out the website it is interesting reading.

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