400 mile week, Strava online competition, a fun look back at old milestones

401 miles this week with 37,373 feet of climbing!

I wasn’t sure if I was going to ride today with the winter storm warning, but the system wasn’t moving in until later in the day. So I rode 45 miles on the way to church with almost 6,000 feet of climbing. Then after church I did a shorter 30 mile ride to take me over the 400 mile mark for the week (measured from Monday to Sunday). Check out the rides below (and temps – almost felt like Wisconsin!)

Commute from home to Clearwater via Vestavia Dr, Hugh Daniel, Double Oak Way (Or download the huge version

Temperature graph for commute from home to Clearwater

Commute from Clearwater Community Church to home (Or download the huge version

Temperature graph for commute from church to home

401 miles is the most I have ridden in one week since my college days in the 90′s… back then, though, I did 400+ mile weeks once or twice a year and even hit 500 miles one week. I usually was way overtrained, though, and had pretty miserable racing results. To avoid that happening again, I’m following up this nice long week of riding with Monday and Tuesday completely off the bike (especially since we are under a winter storm and ice storm warning until Monday night).

I also entered a free online KOM competition for 2011 from Strava. Currently, I’m in second place!

2011 KOM Challenge on Strava. Barring injury, I’m hoping to win this.

And lastly, since 401 miles in one week is a new milestone (post-college), I found a few pictures I had taken of previous milestones in the past few years. 10,000 miles in one year for 2006 after training for and competing in Ironman Florida in November. 300 miles in one week in the middle of June of that year. The other stats for that week are also included. It was much easier back then – I had a bike computer that tracked time, speed, distance, and temperature. I would reset it once a week on Monday morning and accumulate a week’s worth of stats over the course of a week. Now it’s GPS systems and detailed individual ride analysis including power, heartrate, cadence, etc…

10,000 miles in one year – December 31, 2006

300 miles in one week – June 2006

300 miles in one week – total training time – June 2006

300 miles in one week – June 2006 – average speed for the week

300 miles in one week – June 2006 – maximum speed 53.1mph

Last ride of 2010

The weather forecast for today included a winter weather advisory with really cold temps. We went to visit some friends about 30 miles away near Hayward, WI. I took my bike along to try to ride back to Shell Lake if the roads were clear enough. I mapped out a route that took me near the highest point in the area – Meteor Hill. Even though I was on my mountain bike, I was flying home with a stiff wind coming from the northeast, mostly a tailwind. Wonderful ride, and I’ll let the video and pictures below tell the story.

Heading out from near Hayward, WI

Beaver lodge a few miles into the ride. I saw several more of them throughout the ride.

Interesting historical marker in the middle of the Indian Reservation that I rode through.

My Garmin tried to take me down this road. I don’t think so.

Frozen river.

Icy road near Meteor Hill

Beautiful winter scene looking from near the top of Meteor Hill back down into a valley to the east.

Another beaver lodge – this one had lots of beaver tracks in the snow.

A very frozen Shell Lake – with a pickup truck driving out to the ice fishing huts.

Near the very end of my ride, at the Shell Lake boat landing, frozen beard icicles, 18degrees F

Garmin Connect ride data – annotated

TopoCreator map and elevation profile for the ride
(Or download the huge version)

Epic ride finishing week atop three Strava leaderboards

The Samford student chapter of the ACM organized a ride today leaving from Chelsea High School and climbing up one of my favorite climbs – Double Oak Way. Three brave students and one crazy professor (me) met at 1:00 to complete the ride. We were waiting on one person before the start of the ride, so we found a 30+% gradient grassy downhill to have a little fun on before the start of the real ride. I’ve told the story of the ride in pictures below. At the bottom of the post, I explain about Strava and my position on the leaderboards after today’s rides.

It was definitely cold with the temperature below freezing for the entire ride. Note the min, max, and average temp for the four hour ride.

Samford computer science students John, Adam, and Greg brave the conditions AND the Double Oak Way climb up Double Oak Mountain

Me along with two of my students – John and Adam – on the top of Double Oak Mountain

	Adam descending grassy hill with a few snowflakes visible.
	Greg descending grassy hill – taken from slightly different angle more edge on – check out that slope!
	Me descending grassy hill – view from front
	Watch a video of John descending the hill after the ride

I finished the week atop three Strava leaderboards – best climber, best commuter, most rides – plus 3rd overall. I climbed over 34,000ft for the week, commuted 214 miles or even more if you count my commute today from church back to my house, plus 14 different rides this week totaling 348 miles

Vestavia/Bluff Park Ice Ride

We have had a record-breaking cold spell here in Alabama and everything is frozen over. Today it was a bit warmer, and tomorrow it may hit 50 so I thought I would take some pictures on my ride today of the once every 20 years icy scenes. Ton of climbing on the ride to get to all the good spots. Check out the map, profile, and photos:

Icy cliff behind Brookwood Mall

The sign should say “Watch out for falling icicles!”

View of Samford from Vestavia Drive

Icicles at the top of Columbiana Rd near the intersection of Shades Crest Rd

Star Lake was completely iced over except for a portion the ducks kept open

Well – not all the ducks – not sure what happened to this poor guy.

The duck warmed nonfrozen part of the lake

Awesome mountain bike ride Shell Lake to Rice Lake

Kristine had errands to run in Rice Lake (about 20 miles away), and we wanted to take the kids ice skating – so we worked it out for me to bike down there on some nice backroads for a good 32 mile ride. It was COLD. The air temps were in the lower teens, but the wind was just unbelievable. I only had Kristine’s iphone with me to take these pictures, otherwise I would have taken video of the snow blowing across the road at 20mph. Check out the pics!

Mountain Biking Adventure

	Here’s the annotated topocreator route.
	Lots of long straight flat icy snowy roads – the challenge is finding a smooth line and riding as fast as you can without falling
	Some curvy roads too
	Some very icy roads – this is the stuff you want to avoid
	A huge snow plow
	The view from the high point of the ride
	Blowing snow – the windchill was incredible. There was one part of the ride where the wind was blowing hard from the side and being funneled right into my eye by my sunglasses. I had to turn to look into the wind because my eyeball felt like it was starting to freeze!
	Snow drifts
	Rice Lake – the cool thing about this picture is the island with a picnic table only in the winter (or by boat in the summer)
	Ski-do anyone?
	My mountain bike at the ice rink
	An icy version of me at the ice rink.

Wind skiing

This was awesome to watch. Unfortunately my batteries died right before this guy took off … literally. He got going very fast and then jumped at least 8 feet in the air with the windsail taking him up and setting him back down. I got a new set of batteries in just in time for him to make it back. How cool!!!

Ice Skating Princesses

My favorite picture of Analise and Kristine, the ice princesses