Harmon Hundred 2010

This year is the 40th anniversary of the Harmon Hundred invitational ride. I rode in this back in 2008 and it was a good time. My riding buddy from 2008, Intern John, emailed me today and asked if I was going to do the ride this year as he had received an email from the organizers reminding him to sign up ahead of time.

I haven't done much cycling this summer. In fact, maybe I've been on the bike twice or three times... mostly hauling my daughter around in the pull-behind trailer. We went and watched the Crystal Lake Independence Day Parade that way, and that was probably the last time I was on the bike.

Now I'm wondering if I should whip out a couple of test runs and then take on 50 miles of the Harmon Hundred in Sept. Hmm...

A rolling stone...

They say a rolling stone gathers no moss. The wheels on my bicycle haven't done much rolling this summer! Lots has been going on... Like the eating of tasty food! Here we have the classic brat, but with an unusual topping: Arbys sauce. What does this have to do with biking? Absolutely nothing, which is why my blog is no longer going to be called HamGunners Biking Adventures. Prepare for new and exciting non-cycling related posts. Or at least new, if not exciting.

Long Time No See

Hello blog, long time no see! OK, so its been several months since I've posted here. That's because I have nothing exciting to share. In fact, I haven't been out on more than a couple of short rides all summer. Whats that, you say? How could this be? Its true.... instead, I've become addicted to another form of biking: RPM.

RPM is a 50-minute indoor cycling class based on outdoor riding. You ride to inspirational music over the equivalent of 20-25 kilometres of varied terrain, controlling the intensity of your workout with a resistance dial and pedal speed.

RPM™ Benefits

* Increase your cardiovascular fitness, burn fat and tone and shape your legs, hips, and butt
* Increase leg strength and muscular endurance without building bulk
* Burn up to 600 calories in a normal 50-minute structure (RPM™ has been proven to burn up to 800 calories in one hour)
* Release endorphins to give you that natural high and leave you feeling fantastic

Click here for more RPM info...

So here's the kicker.... I have to go before work because they don't have sessions at a time after work that I could get to. So that means.... up at 4:40am to be at the gym by 5am for 5:15am RPM classes! And I do it twice a week. Crazy? Yes. Fun? Definitely.

May 17 - Ride to the Pond

Today after dinner we took a short ride on the bike. Well, I pedaled and Wubbzy rode in the trailer behind. I had no energy after the Blackhawks lost game one, but she ate all of her chicken at dinner so I decided it was a good reward.

We first rode past Crystal Lake South HS and to a nearby mail drop to drop off some mail. Then we cut back west and south to the bike trail that leads back to our neighborhood. We stopped at the pond with the bridge for a minute, but there was not much action there. The we moved on down the path to another pond and there we stopped for a couple of minutes to enjoy the sun on the dock.



Ride time: 25 mins, 3.92 miles, avg speed: slow

May 3 - Ride to Huntley

This morning I decided to get in a bike ride before lunch. Still sore from 7 hours of hard manual labor in the yard on Saturday, I bravely hit the road on my Trek 400T. The weather was great, but the westerly wind was blowing pretty hard in my face for the first half of the ride.

After riding through parts of Crystal Lake and Lakewood, I went south to the new Centegra medical campus in Huntley. Actually, I stopped just short of there as I turned east at Reed Rd so I could avoid the busy Algonquin Rd intersection. Coming back through parts of Huntley, I stopped for a rest stop next to a pond and some trees.



On the way back home, I rode past our old house in Lake in the Hills. I saw one of the old neighbors outside but didn't stop to talk as he was busy yelling as his kids to do something. :)

Total distance: 13.08 miles, ride time: 1hr 6 min, avg speed: 11.83 mph

April 17, 2009 - Ride to the Lake

Tonight after dinner we took a bicycle ride to the lake and then over by the south elementary school. It was a leisurly ride at a pretty slow pace, but it was still a workout pulling the trailer with 30+ pounds of little girl in the back.



We saw a squirrel and lots of people out walking and even a couple of kids playing on the beach at the lake. The weather was nice... about 68 degrees and it was still sunny at 7pm. Amazing!

Total distance: 6.44 miles, ride time: 37 mins, avg speed: 10.44 mph

March 21st Ride-n-Sleep

Today I pumped up the tires on the Giant Sedona and the trailer to haul the little wubba in. We set out for the lake via a round-about path. We saw several bikers out today but I was the only one pulling a trailer with a 30+ pounds of cargo. We made it to the lake and took a short break before I was ordered to "Keep Moving!!" ...
Just a mile or so later it became very quiet... because she fell asleep! The trailer isn't a smooth ride by any stretch of the imagination, so you can tell she must have been very tired! Maybe the fresh air knocked her out... but that left me with the final 3 miles to ride in silence. That is unless you count the sound of the howling wind in my face as I pedaled into a brisk southern wind! Today was more of a workout than last weekend. I went slightly longer but much slower while towing the trailer.

No pictures to share this time. I will need to post about my new Sigma PC15 heart rate monitor... but I'll save that for next time.

Total Distance: 6.36 miles, Ride time: 40 mins?? ... Avg speed 9.54 mph

March 15, 2009 - First Ride of 2009

With the temp gauge touching 60 degrees today, I decided it was about time to pump up the tires and hit the road. With my chores for the day completed and my daughter asleep taking her nap, I was free to take as long of a ride as I wanted! The problem was, after a winter of sitting on the couch, 30 minutes was about all I felt like riding!

I saw several bikes on the road but for the most part it was people out walking dogs. The irritating part is that they walk their dog, or sometimes 2 dogs, on the bike path and let one dog go to the left and the other to the right -- effectively creating a leash-line across the whole bike path that you can't get past. Dog walkers are oblivious to anyone else and a winter of owning the bike path to themselves has gotten them into some nasty habits. Lets hope they shape up before someone gets clothes-lined riding down the path!

Total Distance: 6.07 miles, Ride time: 29:48, Avg Speed: 12.22 mph

A Casualty of the Economy

The economy has tanked and it has taken my Shenandoah bike trip with it as a casualty of war. The trip is scrapped and the foot of snow outside leaves me unable to do any bike riding. At least the temp is up to 20 degrees now after being sub-zero for so many days this past week.

Alternate plans are still in the works. I might be able to do a smaller scale trip in NC near my folk's place. Lots of bike-friendly places there, or so I'm told. We'll see.

New Bike Gear Bling

Happy New Year! After an unintentional hiatus from blog posting, I'm back! I received a couple of pieces of gear for my Trek this Christmas, as well as a road bike maintenance book, which will come in handy in preparation for my Skyline Drive outing this coming summer.

Because of tunnels through the mountains, its required to have lighting on your bike on the Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Parkway. I don't even have reflectors on the Trek, so this is something I needed to fix. The answer? A couple new Cateye components. The first is the Cateye HL-EL530 (shown below) which is a 1500+ candle power LED headlight.



For the rear of the bike, I got a Cateye TL-LD1100 tail light. This is a 10-LED tail light with various flashing patterns for maximum visibility and long run time.



Its just too cold outside (for me) to go out and try mounting the lights on the bike -- that will come later in the spring or a warmer day later in the winter. The reviews on these items are pretty good, and although its not the same as riding in daylight, it should be good enough for my limited needs.

Rakow Rd Bike Path?

McHenry County plans to widen Rakow Rd to 5 lanes by 2010. Currently, there is a 4-foot wide shoulder that bicyclists use today on this busy road. Once the road is widened, there will be no shoulder and no bike path! At least they're leaving a 10 foot shelf for future MUP creation, but it is needed now. I see bikes riding on the shoulder in the mornings all the time where cars are going by at 55 mph (in a 45 zone). Aside from the 5-lane US-14 going through Crystal Lake, Rakow Rd is the only other east/west route that many people use to get across town or to the McHenry County Prairie Trail, which connects to the Illinois Prairie Path.



The McHenry County Bicycle Advocates have submitted a petition signed by 227 people urging the county board to include the bike path in the construction plans for 2009/10. The county actually asked Crystal Lake and Lake in the Hills to help with the cost of including the bike path but both declined, presumably due to a lack of available budget.

The article appears in the Nov. 23 edition of the Northwest Herald, here.

Climb Data for Skyline Drive

Using some mapping tools from mapmyride.com, I'm able to generate elevation and climb data for my planned trip on the Skyline Drive in VA next summer.



Keep in mind that I'll be traveling from South to North -- or right to left on the above diagram. If I were heading south, there would be almost 20 miles of 5% grades (or higher) of climbing right out of the gate. Since I'm going South to North, there is only one section where I'll be climbing 5% grades. This is what I had expected based on various reading. Its easier (relative) to bike north towards Front Royal.

Prairie Trail North - Nov 2, 2008

This afternoon I took a short ride north on the McHenry County Prarie Trail towards McHenry. I started at home, rode 3 miles to the trail, and then rode north through Crystal Lake. I continued through Sterne's Woods which has a series of extremely steep climbs and descents through the woods. Even in the granny gear this will get your heart beating and your moving at a snail's pace. Past Sterne's woods, I continued north until reaching the Nunda Township garage north of Prairie Grove. This is the same place the the McHenry County Wireless Association has its monthly meetings... and its about 7.75 miles from home via bicycle. I continued just north to the next road where I turned around and headed back home. A few raindrops fell when I first started back, but it never got to the "sprinkling" stage and subsided without much fuss.

No pictures this time -- but I wish I had my camera handy because just south of Sterne's Woods I saw a guy riding on a unicycle! Not only was it a unicycle but it was a BIG wheeled unicycle. The wheel might have been 3 feet in diameter... and I was staring at the guy thinking "woah" and he just said "hi" and kept going. I wonder if he actually rode that thing through Sterne's Woods... it would have been crazy considering the extreme grades of the trail through that stretch.

I wish I knew the actual grade % of those hills. Then I would know if that is comparable to what I would experience riding on the Skyline Drive in Virginia. If this is comparable, then I have a lot of preparation to do to get into shape. On some of those hills, every pedal with my right foot resulted in the front wheel coming off of the ground slightly.

Max speed today was 31.22 mph!! That was going down one of those crazy hills in Sterne's Woods. This thrill didn't last long as i quickly starting going uphill again and around a corner so I had to slow down.

Total distance: 16.54 miles, Ride time: 01:25:59, Avg speed: 11.41 mph

Cold Weather Training

Its not winter yet, but its been below freezing a couple of nights in a row now. Tomorrow should be warm for trick-or-treating, but in a few days it will return to some very cool weather which is not conducive to cycling. Sure, you can get cold-weather riding gear, but what about sweating while wearing layers? Gore-tex and other fancy fabrics are supposed to wick it away from you, but then you need to spend $150 on a cold-weather riding outfit... just to ride a few times when its not snowing or icy out. Nope... not for me. So what's the solution to get my biking fix? I need to get an indoor trainer.

Two options for trainers: a traditional magnetic (or fluid) resistance trainer or a set of rollers. The one type looks like this:



The way it works is you basically connect the rear wheel to the frame of the trainer and the tire is up against the resistance unit. They're usually adjustable (resistance) and some of them are magnetic based and others are fluid based.

The other type of trainer is the roller trainer -- here you have no fixed connection to the trainer and you must balance yourself on it at all times. This is said to help you improve balance in general, but others say its just crazy. I'd like to give it a go, but most people suggest wearing a helmet even while indoors as the risk of falling off is greater than normal riding! Here's what one looks like:



You can probably tell, but the rear wheel balances between the two closer rollers and the front wheel rests against the front roller. You can find bunch of info on roller trainers at the wikipedia site here. Wikipedia describes it this way: "Bicycle rollers are a type of bicycle trainer which makes it possible to ride a bicycle indoors without moving forward. However, unlike other types of bicycle trainers, rollers do not attach to the bicycle frame, and the rider must balance him or herself on the rollers while training. Bicycle rollers normally consist of three cylinders, drums, or "rollers" (two for the rear wheel and one for the front), on top of which the bicycle rides."

I'm hoping that on Black Friday (day after Thanksgiving when the big Christmas sales begin) I will be able to get a great deal on a trainer for my indoor winter biking/training. I will need to keep active in the winter in preparation for my planned tour of the Skyline Drive in 2009. You can read about those plans here.

Random Reading

No big bike rides to report on today. I did take my daughter on a tour around the town a couple of days ago but forgot to log the miles in Bike City. Oh well. Probably 6-8 miles on the Giant pulling the trailer.

I do spend a little time each day on Google Reader following various blogs and other RSS feeds, many of them biking related. Here's just a few of the sites I follow:

• Crazy Guy on a Bike -- Lots of long-distance touring journals, each with a RSS feed. I follow several of these, but there are thousands of journals to read.
  
• Chicago Bike Blog -- Lots of random stuff related to biking and bike-commuting in Chicago!
  
• Bike Commute Tips -- A blog dedicated to bike commuting tips
  
• Cyclelicious -- More of an aggregation of cycling related blog posts than anything else... a one-stop shop for biking news and interesting info!
  
• Bikescape Podcast -- Another aggregation of cycling related info with a west-coast bias.
  

There are more that I follow, but some of those are in-tour journals and their longevity is limited to the length of their tour.

Happy reading!

Skyline Drive Trip Plannnig

I'm beginning to plan a bicycle ride along the entire length of the Skyline Drive in the Shenandoah National Park. Its about 105 miles, all of it through the mountains. Sound crazy? It probably is! ...


View Larger Map

The idea is to take it easy and spend 2.5 days biking the Skyline Drive. I will have to work hard, but it won't be crazy-hard, or at least that's my intention. I may cover 40-50 miles the first day, have a really easy 2nd day and then the 3rd day will be 30-40 miles, but the last 20 miles is mostly downhill.

The Skyline Drive is through a National Park and thus the speed limit is 35 (bike-friendly) and also commercial truck traffic is prohibited (also bike-friendly). I originally wanted to bicycle the Blue Ridge Parkway (which starts where the Skyline Drive ends) but decided that the Skyline Drive would be easier due to its shorter length (105 miles -vs- 469 miles on the BRP) and its also mostly on a plateau, versus the wild and crazy elevation changes found on the BRP.

I'd be staying with the family at a couple of the lodges situation along the Skyline Drive: Big Meadows Lodge and Skyland Lodge. The family will go off and visit several of the Civil War battlefields in the Virginia area and then meet me at the lodge in the afternoons. After the trip ends, we'll all continue to the DC area to do the tourist thing as a family, including catching a couple of baseball games in Baltimore and in DC, part of our quest to visit all of the MLB ballparks.

Ride to Dundee - Oct 18 2008

Today I decided to head south on the McHenry County Prairie Trail and go to the Fox River. When I got to the river I decided to go a little farther.. and farther, until I ended up all the way down in East Dundee at IL-72 (There's a DQ there where the Fox River Trail crosses IL-72. The path becomes the Fox River Trail when you cross into Kane County, just south of Algonquin. I saw many squirrels -- maybe 15 or more, but never had my camera handy to snap a picture. I did take some other pictures.

Just south of Rakow Road in Crystal Lake, there is a large gravel pit operation and I snapped a few pictures of this operation.



Those conveyor belts run for what seems like a few miles, pulling gravel.



There are fancy contraptions to move the gravel from a belt at one height to a belt at another height also.



Must be doing some sort of processing of the gravel in this old building... or the building is just there to look pretty. Not sure.



Above you can see something strange. There are gates across the path and they detour you just around the gates through a crosswalk. Its unclear why they did this, except maybe to force bikes to slow down and/or stop at the road crossing. Maybe bikers were blowing through the stop sign and running in front of cars? Hard to say.



The Fox River Trail follows the Fox River south of Algonquin on its way to Carpentersville.



Another shot of the river above. In Kane County, there are several spillways that run right across the path draining into the river. All but 2 were dry today, and those only had half an inch of water in them running into the river. I suppose on a rainy day the trail would be a little more dangerous. One section of the trail actually went from blacktop to packed dirt as it was very close to the river and perhaps they'd lost the battle with the river flooding year-in and year-out and so they left this 50 yard section of the path unpaved.



As I came into Carpentersville I came across a couple of coffee/snack shops right along the trail. A bit farther south, at the Main Street crossing I saw this strange car in a parking lot next to the trail. It turns out the guy had a grill on the back of the car and was selling drinks, hot dogs and brats to hungry/thirsty trail riders! I only had my debit card, so I could not get anything.



I finally reached IL-72 and the Dairy Queen in East Dundee. Here I sat on one of the many picnic tables for a few minutes drinking some water before heading north on the return leg of my trip. On the way back, I saw the same sights again, including lots of squirrels and other bikers on the trail.

Total distance: 25.13 miles, ride time: 1hr 55 min, avg speed: 13.07 mph

Pondering the next big bike ride

Since I managed to book a flight to Houston on the day of the Udder Century, I won't be riding in that one next year. I'm still considering other options, and one of them that looks interesting is the Tri State Tour, sponsored by Bicycle Illinois. The ride starts in Hammond, IN and ends in Kenosha, WI. You ride on bike paths along Lake Michigan for 75% of the ride, which would be pretty nice, and the route is reported to be "very flat" which is also nice for long distance riding. Its about 85 miles with an optional 15 mile loop up in WI to stretch it to a full century ride.

I've contacted Intern John about the possibility of doing this ride and I've set a countdown timer on the right of this page to countdown to the Tri State Tour instead of the Udder Century! The tour is actually run on two separate days, but its a one-day event. You just have two dates to pick from: July 18th or August 1st.

Today is actually a bit chilly: only 55 degrees currently and a high of 59. It is quite sunny though, and tempting for me to go out on the bike for a ride to the river or something later today. But the grass also needs to be cut and tomorrow is the IL QSO Party, in which I will be operating... so tomorrow is shot for any sort of cycling or grass-cutting activities.

Prairie Trail Touring - Oct 11, 2008

Yesterday Kurt and I rode to the McHenry County Prairie Trail bike path and rode from Crystal Lake to the north side of McHenry and back. Total distance was over 31 miles for the afternoon -- my best ride yet in terms of distance. The terrain was more challenging than the distance itself...

The Prairie Trail goes through Sterne's Woods on the north side of Crystal Lake and you would not believe how hilly that area is. There are some signs suggesting that bikers get off their bikes because it is too steep -- but we carefully rode down those hills. Going up was another story. I am experiencing an issue on my Trek where the smallest chain-ring won't engage (it just goes clickyity-click) so I can't get into the granny gears. That made it a LOT harder to try and pedal up the hills and there were two of them that I made it half way up and then every push on the pedal was lifting the front wheel off the ground! I finally got off and walked up the rest of that hill as it was nearly straight up! Luckily, the hills were not too long -- just too steep! I think we could have easily added another 10 miles to our ride if we didn't have the extreme hills.

Most of the people you see on the trail are moving faster than us on this day as we're just trying to pace ourselves and not get worn out 15 miles away from home! There was one guy that we passed three separate times. The first time we were stopped getting a drink of water and he rode past but did not stop. Instead, he shouted "Is this the way to Ringwood?" I said yeah.... and 50 feet later he shouted the same question to Kurt who was just ahead of me getting a drink from his water bottle. I guess he didn't believe me. A couple of miles later we catch up to this guy who isn't going all that fast. I asked him where he started his ride from.... Ringwood, of course. Then he went on to tell us of the times in the early 80s when he used to ride on this same trail... with his car. That is until he got busted. It gets even more bizarre. He also started telling us about the time when he was in high school and took two girls (at the same time?) and parked his car on the trail to have sex with these girls in the back of his car but the cops showed up. It was an unlikely story to say the least. What made it funny was the way he emphasized that it was GIRLS he was busted with, so we wouldn't make the mistake of thinking he was taking his boyfriends there. After this bit of the story I laughed and then we decided to start pedaling harder and leave this guy and his stories in the dust.

We crossed over IL-120 and wound our way around on the trail and came to Peterson Park in McHenry. Peterson Park is on the shore of McCullom Lake. Its complete with a nice beach and some picnic areas. It also had a Gatorade vending machine that Kurt was interested in, however it did not accept $20 bills, only $1 and that's all we had between us. Kurt would later get a bottle of Gatorade at a gas station on the way back into town and downed the whole thing in about 5 seconds. Quite an accomplishment indeed! As we were riding back south towards IL-120 we once again saw the guy on his bike who for a 3rd time asked us -- "Is this the way to Ringwood?" Lets hope he found his way home eventually. :)

Since I'm writing this the day after the ride, I can report that the only ill effects from yesterday's ride is a little bit of stiffness in my neck -- but otherwise i'm A-OK. Maybe it was thanks in part to the steak dinner and ice cream from Coldstone that we enjoyed last night!

Total distance: 31.03 miles, ride time: 2hr 58 min, avg speed: 10.46

Fall Ride - 9/28/2008

Temps were perfect for an afternoon ride today. After finishing up some other chores such as re-grouting one of the floor tiles and putting up new screen on the sliding screen door, I put on some lightweight biking apparel (is that code?) and hit the road. I traveled around the southern part of Crystal Lake (the lake itself, not the town) and then hit the country roads west of town. There are a bunch of rolling hills on some of the roads (Bard, Ballard, and Haligus Roads) and it was a good workout! I got up to 27.01 mph on one of the downhills, but I wasn't pedaling super fast... just enjoying the ride and preparing for the uphill climb on the other side!

I saw lots of fall leaves - some on trees, and some on the ground. I also had a mishap with a large ledge of blacktop pavement and my big toe on my left foot. I'm thinking that I need some closed-toe sandals for next year so I don't break a toe as I almost did today! I love my Teva sandals and they're very light and comfy for biking, but I think I'll invest in a pair of Teva sandals with toe protection since my toe still hurts!

Total distance: 16.38 miles, ride time: 01:16:35, avg speed: 12.84 mph