Letters to a young cyclist...

First of all - I'm obviously never going to blog again the way I did during that crazy downtown Toronto, to Oshawa, bike commuting phase that I had. I've changed, but blogging has changed as well. Twitter came along. I think a lot of bloggers choose to micro-blog these days, and that's likely how I now use Strava. A bike ride, a few words of description, a photograph, and I'm done. No need to open Blogger and try to be eloquent. One brushstroke in a Strava ride report does enough of the job that I don't need to explain any further.

Today is unique. I had a miserable ride that I thought I'd comment on a little bit, AND, I happen to have time to open up blogger. What a surprise!!!

It rained like mad on my commute this morning. I wore full rain gear and almost immediately began questioning why I bother to wear full rain gear. It really does nothing except become an extra layer of sodden clothing you have to deal with when you get to work. The rain was warm - I could have just ridden naked and it'd have been less hassle!

Oh - and that phenomenon, which I've potentially written about before in the long history of this blog - where the rain washes through the cushions in your helmet, and sweeps all the old sweat out of the pads, and the old sweat washes down your face, into your eyes, into your mouth... and you've enjoying a salt bath as you ride.... priceless...

Anyway - in the spirit of Rilke writing letters of advice to a young poet, here is one piece of advice from a seasoned bike commuter to a young bike commuter - carry bungee cords with you.

Bungee cords are good for lots of things, like securing a 12-case of beer to your bike-rack. But they're also good for wet clothing situations. 

Your pile of wet gear on the floor of the showers can become something like this:

Plus - does everyone know the newspapers in your shoes trick?

If your shoes are soaked, stuff them with newspapers, and through the course of the morning or afternoon, the newspapers absorb the moisture from the shoes. Often your shoes are totally dry by the end of the day - if you replace the newspapers once or twice.

By the way, this passage (see below) from Rilke is quite intimidating:
if you feel like you could live without writing, then you shouldn't write at all.

I assume he would extend that to the arts generally (painting / dance etc), but how much further would he extend that? If a person is a hobbyist painter, who gets pleasure from it in the few spare moments he/she can do it, but is also a busy parent and can live without painting, do you really never paint at all?
Seems harsh. Only practice your art if you can commit 100% of yourself to it. Otherwise you're a fraud. That's too harsh Rainer.

 "But after this descent into yourself and into your solitude, perhaps you will have to renounce becoming a poet (if, as I have said, one feels one could live without writing, then one shouldn't write at all). Nevertheless, even then, this self searching that I ask of you will not have been for nothing. Your life will still find its own paths from there, and that they may be good, rich, and wide is what I wish for you, more than I can say."
Rilke. Letters to a Young Poet. Letter #1

Shedding plastic like a crazy man

Riding your bike on a trainer in your basement leads to a lot of laundry.
A LOT OF LAUNDRY!

On a longish ride of 40km or more, I've often pulled one wicking sports-shirt off and dropped it on the floor beside me, and put another one on. And, I've yanked off my head band and wrist bands and replaced them with others, and I've mopped my forehead and neck and head with a variety of scrap clothing.
So, I often get off the bike and toss all this sweat-drenched stuff right into the washing machine and run a wash.

Lycra shorts, some manner of micro-plastic, sweat-wicking, sports-shirts.

Which makes you think about the plastic microfibers in clothing problem.
You're an active person - you own a lot of this sweat-wicking athletic clothing - you wear it, and wash it, over and over again, and you're sending plastic microfibers into your local waterways and adding to the large range of environmental problems the world is experiencing.

Yay Us!

If you want to stay active, and also want to minimize your impact on the earth, what do you do?
I guess - as a cyclist - you look at wool.

There are wool jerseys out there, but they're a bit hard to come by, they're expensive, and it worries me a bit that Vintage Velos (where the image below comes from) has a REPAIR link has one of the three main links on their homepage.

Image from Vintage Velos.

I don't think I can ever buy another one of these sweat-wicking shirts. It irks me too much from a tree-hugging perspective to think of buying even more of these things. And I guess I'll start trying to phase my current ones out, and treat myself once in a while at Christmas to one of these expensive wool jerseys.

The Zwifting Treehugger

It's May, and finally warm in central Ontario. I've been bike-commuting to/from work again, and it's as rejuvenating as it always is. There's really nothing quite like the feeling of pedaling away from your workplace on a summer afternoon.

I Zwifted like a madman this winter. My Strava account tells me that I have nearly 3200km in my legs, from Jan 1 to May 10, 2018. In comparison, I did 4280 km for all of 2017. I think I'd be pretty bored with Zwift if I hadn't discovered all the races that you can do. And then the big organized group rides, like the Tour of Watopia. The races obviously fulfill a competitive urge, and the organized rides provide a nice social element - both much more interesting than simply pedaling around Watopia (or London, or Richmond) by myself.

Now that it's spring and bike-commuting season, I anticipate my Zwifting will be relegated to just two or three races (or a group ride) per week, with the bulk of my mileage now coming from the commuting.

I've started using Strava the way that I used to use this blog - taking pictures of things I pass on my rides, musing about the things in those pictures. It's interesting how the "medium" changes over the years. Instagram is obviously where everyone is these days, but for someone who is wordy, a blog still makes some kind of sense - though people have to go to SO MUCH TROUBLE to navigate to your blog these days!    (as opposed to having your instagram / twitter streams come up on their phone every five seconds).

I like this tree.

It's on a route here in my town that I don't take often, but every time I do, I look out for this tree that looks like it'd be very much at home in a Tolkien book or film. It looks like it is waiting to give you a hug - one that you may not be terribly pleased to receive.

Strava news, and a few reflections

Strava is in the news this morning due to some data that has apparently been online for a few months now. At first blush - it is somewhat astounding that Strava exercise data and maps can reveal hidden military bases. But then you realize - wow, this makes total sense!

Of course military personnel use Strava to map their rides, runs, workouts. And of course a number of these people - like the rest of us - don't go into the settings of the app and really figure out what information they should and should not be sharing. Though, at the same time, you would have figured that some military officer who uses Strava him or herself would have thought about this in the past, as he looked at the map of his daily run on the Strava site, and realized that it showed the exact distance around the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan (here's a good version of the story from the BBC).

In active transportation circles, the Strava heat maps are a tool used when talking to cities / municipalities about streets and routes that need safety upgrades. You can use the heat maps to tell what the popular routes are through your town. Fairly often, you'll see a stretch of road that is legitimately dangerous for cyclists, but also pretty much the only choice to get through that part of town. So, the Strava heat maps get placed in front of the noses of city council as you describe the need for improvements and alternatives in cycling infrastructure.

More personally, Strava is just awesome. And I'm not even really a data geek like all the other cycling data geeks out there.

I had a fairly lazy and slothful fall 2017, and have hit 2018 very keen to get some fitness back. And Strava let's me compare lots of things, including Jan 2018 to Jan 2017, and I can tell that I'm totally blowing both Jan 2017 AND Feb 2017 away right now (thanks to cycling on Zwift).

And, Strava being as easy to use as it is, I like seeing ride data like this below for a Jan 21 ride. I'm getting to be a bit of an old guy now, and it tickles me pink so see that I can still hang out pretty much at my maximum heart-rate for 3 or 4 minutes. 

Anyway - Strava is an amazing trove of data about your life as an athlete, or your quest for an active lifestyle. I wish I'd been using Strava back in 2006/2007 when I started this blog, and was doing the downtown Toronto to north Oshawa bike commute!