Daniel and I spent last week on the very beautiful Wallowa Mountain Rambler cycling tour. Whew! With the tandem and about 100 pounds of gear, it was quite a workout getting up some of those hills!

Despite the work, I didn’t lose any weight (and didn’t expect to) because of the killer food available at every meal. Our guides, Celia and Andrew, did an amazing job of cooking up fabulous fare and I wasn’t about to turn it down. If you ever want to tour in the Northwest, I highly recommend Wild Heart Cycling.

Several of us were very interested in seeing elevation profiles for the route, and when we got home, I found a very cool site that makes it pretty easy: MapMyRide.com. It’s part of a larger network of fitness sites and offers some clever features, mostly based on Google Maps and Google Earth. They really did a great job of putting it together.

Here are the routes for our trip: day 1 · day 2 · day 3 · (day 4 was a rest day) · day 5 · day 6 · day 7

As you can see, the elevation profile isn’t all that bad, but remember the gear! I was glad to be on the tandem where I could take advantage of Daniel’s enthusiasm for hills. I’m considering getting a touring bike of my own for future tours but we’ll see. I’d have to get a lot stronger (or pack all the heavy stuff in Daniel’s trailer…).

We also took a whole lotta pictures of the tour which you can browse if you’re interested.

Next up: resume the dieting and get back under 140 pounds…

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Since we’re running low after all the recent riding, I looked online a week or so ago and ended up buying a small supply at my local bike shop. The shipping from the online places just kills the value, and even when you hit a free shipping sale, the product prices aren’t super-stellar.

Enter Amazon Grocery. I thought I might as well look and see what they offer, and though they don’t have all of my favorite products, I was able to find Carb Boom! for $0.84 per serving, and Clif Shot Bloks (which I love) for$0.60 and $0.64 per serving (for the Lemon Lime and Orange flavors, respectively). Sadly, they don’t have the Piña Colada flavor, which is my favorite, but their great prices inspire forgiveness.

The kicker?  Free Super Saver shipping means those prices are the one’s I’m actually paying.  Sweeet.

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Fortunately this picture is not from the long (100 km) charity ride on Saturday, but instead from a short ride around town on Sunday. Daniel and my mom rode the tandem and it was windy enough that I wanted to draft on my single bike. It didn’t rain much while we were actually out riding, but a whole lot of muck from the earlier rainstorm got kicked up, right onto my face. It was still worth it for the drafting (Daniel was pushing a pretty good pace and I was working to keep up) and that’s what showers are for, right?

Saturday, on the other hand, was beautiful biking weather. It was cool-ish in the morning and warmed up to mid-70s by the time we were done. There was a good bit of wind, but it was constant, so at least what we fought as a headwind also benefited us as a tailwind.

Because of the differences in terrain and wind between this ride and the Cycle for Independence last month, it’s a little tricky to compare. This weekend I think we had a little more wind, but also more tailwind to push us along. Overall, though, I think I’m stronger. We managed to shave some time off and get it done in almost exactly four hours, and Daniel says he felt like I was stronger (his opinion is particularly significant as he was the other rider on the tandem).

Because I tend to try all sorts of things at a given time (rather than be a good researcher and do a control run, then add one variable), it’s hard to directly correlate results to one change. Did I do better because of PUSH.tv or because of all the mountain biking? Or was it because I’m slightly lighter? Who knows. But it does seem like this combination of PUSH + lots of biking + healthier eating is having the desired effect. I’m continuing all three and hopefully by my sister Leanna’s wedding (August 19) I’ll be downright buff.

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In any case, tomorrow is the Bob LeBow Bike Tour, another 100km charity ride.  I’m trying to remember the last time Daniel and I rode the tandem, and I’m not sure we have since the last 100km.  It’s mostly been mountain biking lately (and I am just not gutsy enough to attach myself to Daniel on single-track, even if we had the bike for it).

This will be a good functional test of the PUSH training, since I’d only done it for two weeks before the last ride, and now it’s been five.  I haven’t done this ride before, but if it’s a similar course, the ride time and overall feeling when I’m done should be a good indicator of progress.  I’ll update you with my impressions next week.

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Yesterday, though, the bodybugg let me down.  Here’s the scenario.Daniel and I had been planning for a while to do what he calls “the big Hard Guy loop.”  As I mentioned in another post, Hard Guy is an advanced mountain biking trail that has long been held up to me as one of the most challenging partial-day rides around here.  A couple of weeks ago we did the Hard Guy trail itself, but were waiting for a Sunday when we would have abundant time to do the big loop.

The big loop starts with three miles of constant climbing on the road to get to the beginning of the dirt trail.  It then proceeds as we did it before, with a little over six miles of almost constant uphill on a dirt trail (sometimes single-track, sometimes old Jeep trail).  When we did it before, we turned around at that point, and rode back down to the pavement where we’d parked.

Instead of stopping there, though, the big loop climbs a dirt road for another 500 feet of altitude in about a half-mile of distance.  Yeah, that hurt.  We stopped to let the nausea pass and had a quick snack, and then rode down the other side of the summit for a while on road, hit a couple of single-track trails with downs (Scott’s) and ups (Corrals), climbed back to the road, went down a short trail, and looped back to our original starting point on one of my favorite trails (Crestline-Kestral).

All said and done, it comes to about 22 miles (as opposed to the 12 or so for just the Hard Guy trail).  I had extra motivation, too, because Daniel bribed me with a rain shell if I did the whole loop.  I felt like I did reasonably well, not taking any breaks (even though I was so tired) except for the one at the summit, so I deserved my prize.

When we finished up, Daniel looked at the Polar heart-rate monitor he was wearing and read off the stats: 4 hours, 25 minutes of riding; 2550 calories; average heart rate (which I can’t remember, but know was annoyingly low because he’s annoyingly fit).  I was very tired and looking forward to getting home and syncing my bodybugg to see how many calories I’d burned.  Considering that the much shorter Hard Guy ride a couple of weeks ago burned 954 calories, I was also looking forward to a good lunch.

Imagine my surprise (read: freak out!) when I downloaded my data and was told I’d burned just 1212 calories!  In four and a half hours of killer hard work!  (Okay, some of that was downhill… but only about an hour of the total.)  Arrggg!

I felt terrible.  I’d put in this ton of effort, and apparently it was really minimal in the end.  I was ready to go all out depressive.  Fortunately, Daniel popped in to see the results and immediately protested their accuracy.  I argued feebly for the accuracy for a little while, and he asked how the results are calculated.  I pulled up bodybugg’s “The Science Behind bodybugg” page and had him read it.  There were a few things that bugged his engineer-brain:

•  The “Heat Flux” metric that’s a core part of the way the bodybugg calculates work.  One thing I didn’t mention above was that the temperature was mostly in the 90s (Fahrenheit) for our ride yesterday (as opposed to 60s and 70s a couple of weeks ago).  Daniel thinks that maybe the bodybugg wasn’t accurately recording this metric since the air temperature was about the same as the heat I was dissipating.
• The bodybugg doesn’t seem to track heart rate, which is a pretty accurate indicator of cardio exertion.
• The accelerometer seems like it would be less helpful on a bike, particularly on uphills where the forward progress is extremely slow, but very steady in both forward speed and on the various axises (axes?).  I expect that the accelerometer actually has more relevance going downhill, when there’s a lot of motion in all directions (especially on my hard-tail bike!), but the effort level is just a fraction of the climb.

Honestly, we have no idea why the numbers were so low.  I’m going to ask my bodybugg trainer about it on our call tomorrow.  But Daniel (together with the comparison data from the shorter ride) has persuaded me that the numbers really are low.  Even bodybugg’s calorie calculator suggests I should have burned at least another thousand calories.

At this point, my biggest question is: if it doesn’t give me accurate data for my chosen sport (cycling in various temperatures!), should I try to return it and get my money back (and buy a sweet Polar HRM), or keep it for rest days?  What do you think?

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Saturday morning Daniel and I did the Cycle for Independence ride on our tandem. 25 miles the previous Saturday was the most we’d done on the tandem, and we’d only logged about 100 miles total on that bike, so I was very pleased that we made it through the Metric Century route (100 km or roughly 62 miles) in good shape. Our ride time was similar to last year on our single bikes, but I felt much better this year, despite having done less training leading up to the ride.

The Cycle for Independence is also just the first of the 2007 Treasure Valley Charity Bike Series. There are three more (relatively) short rides like this one, and a two-day event that’s similar to the MS150 ride we did in Colorado last year (except with a lot fewer riders).

We’re tentatively planning on doing all of the rides (because if we do, I’ll get a commemorative water bottle and pair of cycling socks ; don’t underestimate the motivation power of “free” stuff with a goal-oriented girl like me… only, I guess the stuff isn’t even remotely free because of the registration fees… whatever–it’s for charity!). I’m hoping to do the Century route (100 miles) on the tandem with Daniel for the Blue Cruise in August. That would be a big accomplishment for me.

Last night was an epoch in my mountain biking adventures. For several years, Daniel’s been trying to get me to ride a trail called “Hard Guy.” His cajoling was hampered somewhat by the fact that he also regularly told me how difficult this trail is. It’s basically a steady climb for about six miles. I’ve done steady climbing in moderation (you know, a quarter-mile or so!), but nothing of that magnitude.

Well, I hadn’t until last night, anyway. After our mountain biking ride on Sunday morning, Daniel suggested that I might be ready to try Hard Guy some upcoming Sunday. Upcoming weekends are pretty well full, though, so he said, “What about Wednesday night?” Wednesday’s typically a down day for me, but I knew this was coming, so I agreed. (Incidentally, I did eat as if it was a regular down day until the ride itself, when I had Gatorade, GU, and Shot Bloks… yummy!)

I had a pretty good advantage over Daniel, given that he’d ridden his road bike to work (~15 miles) and to the trail head (a few miles of downtown riding and 3 miles of moderately steep uphill road) while I just drove the truck with the mountain bikes. That worked well, because when I was working hard, gasping, etc., he was still content to do his “little recovery ride.”

The ride was about as difficult as I expected, but I found it was within my ability. When we got to the turn-around spot (two hours of climbing later), I wasn’t exhausted, just a little tired, which is all I could ask. My only regret was that it was too late (i.e. too close to sunset) to do the “bonus climb” that would have earned me a jersey from Daniel (have I mentioned that bribery is very effective with me?). Next time.

In any case, I think Daniel was genuinely impressed, which says something, given his high standards. I know from past experience that weight loss helps me bike better (just less to haul up the hill) and I also suspect that my PUSH strength workouts played a big part in my overall ability to keep going. I’m delighted with the results so far. Who knows how strong I’ll be at the end of the summer?

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