Tag: map

The Tour de Groundhog

Last night after dinner my dad told me I was crazy for planning to do a bike race today. Of course, at the time it was 34˚ and raining. Luckily the weather was a little bit better for the Tour de Groundhog today. In fact, the weather started out a little too good, as I had to shed several layers once I started warming up.

I noticed on the drive over to Springfield that there was a lot of standing water/ice on the ground from some recent flooding. It wasn’t until I started warming up that I realized what this would mean for the race: mud, and lots of it.

I did the masters 30+ race (which is interesting given that I am 29, but apparently they use your age at the end of the calendar year…). There were only 7 people in the race, so it wasn’t too crowed. After about 10 meters the course immediately turned into the woods and from there it was a battle of wills more than an athletic competition. A good 30-40% of the course was unridable. So there was lots of dismounting and running/walking with the bike. About 2 times each lap my tires would literally stop spinning, so I would have to stop and pull a handful of mud out of both my front and rear brakes in order to be able to ride again.

The course map

It certainly was an adventure. I did get lapped by the winner, but that wasn’t totally unexpected. I ended up 5th of the 7 people in the masters race, which was good enough to win some socks and water bottles (two things of which I own copious quantities, but still never enough). Just to give you an idea how bad the conditions were, I travelled less than 3 miles in 33 minutes of racing. This is a slower pace than I averaged running for 28.4 miles at the Riddle Run ultramarathon 3 weeks ago. Perhaps my dad knew what he was talking about.

The Bald Tire

Yesterday I did a 50 mile group ride from Urbana to Monticello and back. It was the first ride of this distance & intensity I have done in months, and it gave me a pretty good idea exactly how out of shape I am.

As we were just coming back into town I got a flat tire. Some other riders stopped to help me change it and we quickly realized that my rear tire had outlasted its usefulness by a number of miles. In many places the tread had completely worn through and the purple liner was visible.

I suppose that’s what happens with cheap tires. I got this tire in a pinch at a bike store in Peoria after discovering my rear Brontrager Race Lite had been sliced up somehow in the trunk of my old car. I still had a Race Lite tire in front and it has lasted over 5000 miles.

Needless to say it was time for new tires. Fortunately, Champaign Cycle was not too far away, so I decided to save myself a trip later in the day and just go straight to the bike shop on my way home. I picked up a pair of Bontrager Race Lite Hardcase tires, which have been highly recommended by multiple people.

The Illini Chill

This morning was the Illini Chill bike ride in St. Joe, IL. It’s a 22 mile ride in the middle of winter that may or may not benefit the Boy Scouts (there were lots of Boy Scouts hanging around at the start and the half way point).

It started with a “lumberjack breakfast” at a church in St. Joe. For some reason I assumed this meant pancakes but I was way off. It was greasy biscuits, greasy gravy, greasy eggs, greasy sausage, greasy bacon, greasy hash browns. Fortunately I found a small table with bagels, toast, and an apple (all of which I at least consider to be edible). I had been expecting to meet several of my cycling friends from Champaign-Urbana, but I did not recognize a sole at the breakfast.

Next was the small matter of the 22 miles in sub-freezing temperatures with a considerable amount of wind. There was a much smaller crowd at the start than anyone anticipated. Eventually, the ride organizers realized that many people were waiting at the location where the ride started last year, rather than the new location where it started this year. Both groups started at roughly the same time and we all met up once we got out of town.

I was now riding with some of my friends (Karl, Luke, Larry, Tom, Mark), but it was very slow going. The country roads were in terrible shape. They were very slick. There were huge drifts. In some places we couldn’t even tell we were on a road. After the first turn when we got a cross wind, 3 people hit the deck right away. Fortunately the considerable snow padded their falls and nobody was injured.

It was actually pretty fun. All I could do was grin and think to myself, this is some crazy shit.

I was wearing 3 layers of socks (including my magic Gore-Tex socks), 3 layers of pants, and 3 layers of shirts/jackets. I was overdressed. With the wind at our backs I was sweating buckets. I had been cold standing around the parking lot before the ride so I thought it better to err on the side of warmth.

We made our way to the half way point at a church in Royal, IL. More Boy Scouts were waiting with some hot chocolate and granola bars. After a short rest we decided to deviate from the set course in order to travel on roads which were more likely to be cleared of snow. We started quickly on the way back, only to turn into a strong headwind for several miles. This was less fun… but we made it back without incident.

After the ride was a spaghetti lunch at yet another church. It was a good time with some exciting (if a tad scary at times) riding.

Our route for the 2008 Illini Chill ride

The Arboretum

I ran a few miles on the cross country course at the arboretum tonight. It was my first run since the Riddle. I made it about three miles before my ankle became a little sore then I walked back home. It will take just a little while longer for me to fully recover.

In the fall the cross country course is marked with silver paint

Arboretum 1.5 mile cross country loop

The Armory Loop

Tonight, like every Tuesday night during the winter months (e.g. standard time), the Second Wind running club meets at the Armory on the campus of the University of Illinois for a fun run. A few people stay indoors to run laps on the 200 meter track, but many people venture outdoors to run a 5.75 mile loop through town.

I took my GPS with me this evening to get a good map of the route I’ve been running for years. I used Mathematica to import and plot my GPS data on top of images from Google Maps.

Here is a map of the Armory loop with mile markers:

And here is a map of the Armory loop with kilometer markers:

The Schroth Trail

This morning I ran with a group of Buffalo Warriors, a C-U area trail running group affiliated with Second Wind Running Club. We ran at Schroth Trail on the south side of the Sangamon river in Allerton Park. We traversed the 5.9 mile loop twice in 5˚ weather. In the photo you can see how much ice accumulated on my beard and hair.

The last time I ran this trail was almost exactly 4 years ago, a month or so before I injured my left knee. As was the case today, that run was also 1 week before the world renowned Riddle Run, my first and only (thus far) ultramarathon.

This trail is also special to me in that I ran there frequently my freshman year at UIUC with the cross country team. One September Sunday morning we did a 16 mile long run on this trail in 1:40:00 (6:15 miles), which is faster than I ran 11.8 miles today, and probably remains one of my best long runs ever.

Unfortunately, my little GPS didn’t do a very good job in the dense forest. The two paths should be identical :(

The First Ride of 2008

I tend to struggle with down time.  I would generally always prefer to be doing something rather than nothing.  It is this tendency that often leads me to plan more activities than any mortal could hope to accomplish, mostly out of fear and loathe of wasting a few moments.

Last week Melissa and I drove to Dallas to spend the New Year holiday with my two brothers who live in that area, their families, and my folks who flew in as well.  Our tiny car was packed full of clothes, presents, and of course, my bike, the Thundercougarfalconbird.  We met my 3 week old niece and saw my 2 year old nephew for just the second time.  The festivities were joyous and a great time was had by all.

I found an hour of down time on Wednesday afternoon.  It was incredibly cold, colder than it should be in Texas (even in January).  It was getting dark, and the Dallas rush hour traffic was picking up.  I had plenty of reasons not to go, but I couldn’t bear the thought of having driven 900 miles with my bike in the back of the car and not getting in a single ride.  So I rode.

Riding in a strange place is always fun, but I was a little more apprehensive about this ride.  The arterial roads were narrow and busy.  The residential roads didn’t seem to go very far.  Fortunately, as I made my way out of my brother’s neighborhood I came across a newish housing development, which wasn’t on the map.  It had good roads and not a lot of traffic.  I was surprised that after I wound through this neighborhood for a while the road connected to the next subdivision, then the next, then the next.  Before I knew it I had gone 7-8 miles through residential neighborhoods and I was out of time.  I found a good turnaround point when I reached a lake, then retraced my path back home.  I got 15 or so miles in for the first ride of 2008. I didn’t freeze. I didn’t get run over.  Mission accomplished.

I always find signs that state the obvious to be amusing.

The route.  Google’s satellite imagery is a little out of date for this area.

 There were some small rolling hills, but the total elevation change was less than 100 ft.