Mar 17 - hills vs flat and wind

It was a good ride yesterday. I got started a little late trying to find a place to park the car, but still within the time constraints. The way that it works is that you have a published start time -- in this case 7:30 a.m. -- and that starting Control is "open" for one hour. As long as you start within that hour, you're ok -- but your starting time for the purposes of calculating time-to-ride still starts from the opening time. I'm sure that this is a carryover from the rules for Brevets, which are organized events, but hey -- those are the rules.

I started rolling at 7:55 and got to the southernmost point of the ride -- 39 miles in -- at 10:20. That was good time. Winds were light, riding conditions were good (no rain), it's a very nice route. Then I headed north, tracing the same route almost back to the starting point and then open countryside northwest of that. By that time the NE wind had picked up and some of it was a struggle, but that's what riding in FL is all about -- wind.

I was lulled into complacency by the frequency of convenience stores and found myself in the open countryside finishing my water -- oh oh. The route then went by a national park and I went into the park office and thankfully was able to fill my bottles from the faucet. Whew. Before that I was contemplating knocking on someone's door. Another 15 miles and I would have been able to fill up at a convenience store, but it was hot and that 15 miles would have been tough -- or rather, re-hydrating would have been tough. Next I turned eastward for about 15 miles and got the full force of the wind, before turning south and enjoying a relatively fast 23 mile run-in to the end. I finished at 5:30 giving me an "official" time of 10 hours. Yes, I pushed those last few miles to keep it at 10 hours.

Total distance -- 139.7, according to my GPS (which includes a mile or so of reversing course when I missed a couple of turns by a hundred yards)

Rolling time -- 8:33; average rolling speed 16.34 -- which isn't too bad.

Part of the difference between the 8:33 rolling time and the 10:00 official time is the late start. The other hour is accumulated time in convenience stores, standing outside convenience stores stuffing my face and some very long traffic lights at busy State Roads where I don't have enough metal to trip the sensor.

That's the good news. The bad news is that this ride, being very flat, keeps you in the saddle vs standing. I did not pay attention to my butt and have ended up very chafed. There's no broken skin, thankfully, but I need to get this corrected before Saturday morning. It's silly when you think about the longer rides that I've done, but obviously I was doing something different.

So -- that's one reason that I prefer hills to wind. The other reason is just my sense that I'm a better climber, compared to other riders, vs riding on the flat, in the wind where others are stronger than I. But -- I actually found a scientific explanation for this that seems to apply. I found a website that provides formulas for rolling and wind resistance, converting hills to EFD -- equivalent flat distance etc. The following paragraph comes from the article:

On a climb each additional watt of power increases the rider's velocity by a greater percentage than at the higher speeds encountered on the flats. The reason is aerodynamics. As velocity increases, the amount of power absorbed by the wind increases very quickly (by the cube of velocity). In our example, at 22 mph on the flats, 85% of a rider's power consumed by aerodynamic drag; but at 10 mph (on a 6% grade with the same power) its only 7%. So the wind extracts a heavier toll on the flat leaving only 0.18 residual watts (1 - 0.82 watts) of each additional watt, but there's a healthy 0.93 residual watts (1 - 0.07 watts) on a 6% incline.

The article is complete with derivations and formulas, but if you consider that the extra wind means that a decreasingly smaller amount of your power output gets to actually move the bike forward, that explains a lot ... for me. I tend to leave people behind on a climb and then struggle to keep up on the flat. Wind exacerbates the issue. I'm probably not aerodynamic enough .. I'd be better if I went back to having aero bars on the bike so that I could lie down more. That would also help with the chafing issue since any change of position is a good thing. However, for these rides, where it most matters, I don't have room for aero bars amongst the lights and other paraphernalia.

The other solution for flat rides is to ride when there is no wind. That, of course, is at night. Judith mentioned that when she does the 600km ride she tends to ride through the night. I'd wondered about that ... it's roughly a 30 hour ride, or a little less, so starting at 3 or 4am (those are actual start times for the 600) would get you to the end at 9 or 10am the next day. Yikes. I'm not sure that I'm ready for that. There's something to be said for "getting it over with", but I don't know ... well, I've got two weeks to decide. I might do one of the 600's straight through and one with some sleep.

Sandy and Angelika were originally planning on renting beach bikes yesterday but never got to that. Angelika took us out for sushi last night at our local place and it was as good as usual. I don't tire of sushi.

That's it for now. Today I have to pick up the door that we ordered from Home Depot. I then have to find a place to put it until I do the work. Oh fun. Angelika heads back to Philly today but her flight is not until 2:30 or something like that, so they won't be rushing out this morning.

That's really it.