Feb 23 - unencumbered

A little frustrated with lugging all that extra weight, I decided to take off the rack, pack, lights and heavy wheels and go for a short ride with my formerly-lightweight bike. I left the light brackets in place since they don't weigh a lot and take more time to re & re. At the same time I decided to try out the heart rate monitor.

Verdict:

-- what a difference in feel. As I pull from side-to-side I move the bike around much more without all that extra weight providing inertia.

-- is it ever easier to climb ! I only have the causeway overpass to use as my indicator but if I think of carrying all that weight over mountain passes crossing the country, I'm glad that I didn't !

-- can you ever feel the road ! Those 25mm tires that I've been riding upon for the last few weeks really absorb a lot of road feel that travels right up to your butt. The increased weight of the bike also has something to do with it, providing much more inertia and forcing the tires to absorb more than in yesterday's setup.

-- no real difference riding into a headwind (just under 20mph yesterday), which makes sense because that's all about my cross section more than the bike, once the wind has pushed me down to 12-14 mph. Although it might be interesting to put the bike into a wind tunnel by itself ... in practice there's always a rider.

As for my heart -- when I strapped the HRM on I got a reading just under 50 bpm. As I moved around getting dressed, it went up into the 60's. As I rode north on Saxon, into the wind it increased into the 100 bpm range, then climbed to 140 as I climbed the causeway overpass. Riding north on US 1 into the headwind it stayed around 120 and stayed around 120 as I pedaled back with the wind as well (going much faster). It climbed to 140 as I went over the causeway again, then dropped down into the 100-110 range as I rode south on Saxon. I only went 10 miles out and 10 miles back so this was a pretty minor test. I find that once I settle in for a longer ride; that I can maintain higher speeds once my legs have warmed up -- that generally occurs after 25-35 miles. I don't know, and I won't know, how that affects my heart rate unless I experiment with this thing for longer rides. I would probably get a wider range of results riding up north on the rolling hills of highway 69 ... but that won't be until May. It wasn't that uncomfortable, but you are certainly aware of it at all times, strapped across your chest.

Otherwise, I didn't do much. Sandy ran some errands. We had some kind of snapper for dinner -- something that she'd picked up on Sunday because the fish store is closed on Monday. It was excellent. We watched some SG1; she watched the parts of the Academy Awards that she hadn't seen the night before via our recorder.

Today she leaves a little after noon to pick up Marda, who is likely already on the road or at the airport in Philly as I type this. Abby and I will be alone for a while ... sniff sniff.

I'll get out for a ride today, probably leaving before Sandy does. I'll ride for a couple of days with the lightweight setup before reinstalling all the crap. On Tuesday the 3rd we go to Bev's for dinner, my intent being to leave early in the morning and ride down to Sebastian. From my recollection of the trip two years ago, it was just under 130 miles. I'll probably do that ride with the crap installed, so that I don't lose momentum. That weekend, on the 7th, I venture into new mileage territory -- a 400km ride.

That's it, that's enough, for now.