The Daily Parker - Biking

Bike? What bike?

David Braverman — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 17:24:04 GMT

Yesterday I posted about a bike that hadn't been ridden in a while. This morning the bike had gone:

Anyone seen my bike?

David Braverman — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 12:47:54 GMT

Someone appears to have slacked off from his exercise program:

Great ride this morning

David Braverman — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 18:39:17 GMT

I think winds affect my biking regardless of what direction they're coming from. This morning, for example, in calm winds, I set three personal records on a 60 km ride: best distance over 1 hour (30.9 km); best time for 40 km (1:18:14, beating my previous PR by 4:01); and best time for 60 km (1:58:28, beating my previous by 3:22).

Next week I'm planning to ride 110—120 km as part of my North Shore Century training. Maybe another PR or two?

Cyclist knee

David Braverman — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 16:30:28 GMT

Phooey. My ride Saturday seems to have caused some irritation in either the ligaments or cartilege of my left knee. Not crippling, but kind of painful. So no biking this weekend, and I'll have to postpone my planned 80 km ride to the following weekend.

Last year, I couldn't ride the two centuries I'd trained for because of my gallbladder. If I'm out because of my knee this year, I'll be really, really disappointed. And I can't even blame Tonya Harding.

New personal record

David Braverman — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 16:24:22 GMT

Biking yesterday I hit a new PR for spot speed: 54.0 km/h, beating the old record of 53.4 km/h I set last August 26th. Whee!

Grand Prix of Cycling in Evanston

David Braverman — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 23:20:45 GMT

Apparently there will be a series of bike races just outside my office window on July 22.

Biking tracks up

David Braverman — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 23:09:59 GMT

Even though I'm not riding my bike as much as I should (though this is about to change), I've finally got off my butt and put my Google Earth tracks from 2006 and this year.

New personal record

David Braverman — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 20:43:21 GMT

I finally got around to updating my biking stats (but not the Google Earth tracks—Garmin changed their XML format and I haven't written a converter yet). I discovered, to my surprise, that I got a new personal record on May 27th: 40 km in 1:22:15, which is an average speed of 29.2 km/h. This bested my previous record by 23 seconds. Cool.

Also, today's ride took me up to Cicada Central. Wow. I only had two collisions (and only one cicada fatality), but the sound was worth the trip.

On the other hand, the abysmal heat (33°C) was not.

About this Blog

David Braverman — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 15:23:06 GMT

I'm David Braverman, this is my blog, and Parker is my 8-month-old mutt.

Beautiful day for a bike ride

David Braverman — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 23:57:18 GMT

Indian summer is here. It got up into the mid-20s (mid-70s F), so I toodled down to Millenium Park. I don't expect weather like this again until March at the earliest. At least I got to enjoy it.

Perfect weather to wish I were riding

David Braverman — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 16:00:44 GMT

Today is the Apple Cider Century, which I am not riding today because of the late unpleasantness. At this writing (noon in Three Oaks, Mich.), it's 15°C (59°F) with light West winds and nary a cloud to be found. Perfect riding weather.

Sigh.

Tomorrow and Tuesday are supposed to be beautiful as well. Tomorrow morning I meet with my surgeon for my post-op follow-up, and perhaps he'll declare me fit enought to ride again. If so, I'll at least get to spin a little on the last warm day of the year.

Something has changed

David Braverman — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 18:37:44 GMT

I'm David Braverman, and this is my blog.

This blog has actually been around for nearly a year, giving me time to figure out what I wanted to do with it. Initially, I called it "The WASP Blog," the acronym meaning "Weather, Anne, Software, and Politics." It turns out that I have more than four interests, and I post to the blog a lot, so those four categories got kind of large.

I wonder how I'd be doing?

David Braverman — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 16:14:42 GMT

Today is the North Shore Century, a 100-mile bike ride I've trained all summer for. Sadly, I'm not riding today, because a little less than a week ago my gallbladder turned itself green, and my doctors didn't think a major athletic event five days after surgery would be a good idea. But I can't stop wondering, how would I be doing?

Wow, has this week sucked

David Braverman — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 19:25:24 GMT

When I ate lunch on Sunday, my gallbladder contracted to help digest some of the cheese in my salad. A tiny piece of calcium was already lodged in my biliary duct, however, preventing bile from getting out.

Two quick hits

David Braverman — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 17:38:28 GMT

First, I just put a major project to bed. It was my first time out doing litigation support, meaning I wrote software to crunch a whole bunch (= about a billion) of numbers for a law firm who represent a large (= about 350,000) class of plaintiffs. They got the results just now, so unless the defendant chooses not to settle and I get subpoenaed, I believe I'm done.

Second, at least one petty little man on the South Shore Line apparently doesn't "get" the whole idea of bikes on a train:

A day trip to South Bend ended up costing a Lincoln Park man $150 in cab fare after a South Shore Line crew member told him he would have to get his bicycle off the train.

What startled Alan Forester, 34, was that he had taken the South Shore Line to South Bend earlier in the day Sunday and no one said anything to him about his bike. Even more puzzling, he said he had followed the bicycle policy that he read on the railroad's Web site.

I had a similar problem about two years ago, when, after bonking on a very long ride, I attempted to board a Union Pacific North Line train at Highland Park, and got turned away by a conductor who thought my bungee cord was too short. (I think I may have told him at least I had a bungee cord, but we won't go there right now.)

The CTA largely gets it right. All CTA buses have bike racks. This means people can get out of their cars and save the environment by biking without worrying they'll be stranded because of weather or traffic. Why is Metra so opposed to the idea?

Biking the way it ought to be

David Braverman — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 19:40:43 GMT

Yesterday I posted that even a bad ride on my new bike is better than a good ride on my old bike. Today I had a good ride on the new bike. I set eight personal records today, including one that stood for more than 21 years.

More about the new bike

David Braverman — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 14:06:13 GMT

First, I promise to take some photos today. Possibly I can convince Anne to take an action shot or two, which I will post, forgetting for a moment that no one—I mean, no one—can possibly avoid looking like a total dork while wearing bike gear.

Second, I've revised and moved my biking stats page. I thought it was only fair to split off my old bike's records into their own table, because my new bike is so much faster it just wouldn't be fair. Case in point: yesterday, I did 40 km (25 mi) along the lakefront, but I wasn't feeling great. It was warm and humid, I was tired, I hadn't eaten very well, there were children and dogs on the bike path, and I had a couple of minor issues with the bike (trouble clipping in, chain slipping off inner chainring, etc.).

Even with all that working against me, I bested my previous 40 km record by more than four and a half minutes. In other words, a bad ride on my new bike was 5% faster than the best comparable ride on my old bike.

As you can see from the chart, though, comparing Wednesday's OK ride to the previous records shows an 8% improvement over 5 km (3 mi) and an 11% improvement over one hour.

Finally, on the chart you may notice my spot-speed record of 52 km/h (32.3 mph), which I set in May 1985. Yes, in 21 years I haven't managed to make a bicycle go faster than that. Well, watch this space, because today I intend to break that record.

Ate my Wheaties this morning

David Braverman — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 17:06:00 GMT

It's not every day that I set five personal records (PRs). This morning I rode 40 km (24.9 mi) in 1:29:19, beating my old PR (set Tuesday) by 2:29. The other PRs are in my expanded PR table on braverman.org.

Google Earth + Anne's GPS device

David Braverman — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:28:06 GMT

I've put my biking stats (such as they are) on my personal homepage, http://www.braverman.org/. This morning I rode with Anne's Garmin ForeRunner 201, offloaded the XML with Garmin's free software, then downloaded shareware a German programmer named Martin Goldmann to convert that to Google Earth's KML format.

The result: You can now download my track and plug it in to Google Earth.

Minor changes to my personal site

David Braverman — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 14:07:11 GMT

This will interest just about no one but those people who, out of blind love for me, set braverman.org as their home page. I've made a minor change to it, adding my biking stats. To save you the click-through, here they are.