As if there wasn’t enough evidence already to convince a person with diabetes to carefully monitor blood sugars, I saw this news item on the American Diabetes Association web site:
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go test my blood sugar again.
A month ago or so, I wrote an article for Cycling Utah, a magazine for road and mountain bicycling information in Utah and the Intermountain West. The article was titled “Dream Tour Wrapup” and it appears in the March 2007 issue of the magazine.
If you live in Utah, you can probably run down to your local bicycle shop and pick up a copy of the magazine. For everybody else, it might be easier to view the online version of it. Here’s a link directly to the March 2007 issue:
Enjoy!
I woke up this morning at about 6:30 am. I looked outside. It was just starting to get light out and I could see that it was going to be a sunny, cloudless day. Perfect spring riding weather!
Except it was only 14 degrees. The schedule for today’s ride called for an 8 am mass start — an hour earlier than the other rides this weekend. Not that delaying the start would have mattered much. At 8 am, it was 19 degrees at the start and by 9 am it was still just 25 degrees. Hey, but at least it was sunny, right?
Today, we rode on Scenic Byway 128 which parallels the Colorado River to the northeast of Moab. The river cuts through a deep canyon with mostly vertical walls of deep red sandstones.
This area along the Colorado River is incredibly scenic. The Moab area has provided scenery for a number of movies including Rio Grande (1950), Ten Who Dared (1959), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1963), Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade (1988), and Thelma and Louise (1990).
We debated leaving an hour later, so we could let it warm up, but we decided against it. Off we went, on schedule, at 8 am. It was cold, just as we had expected. The 500 foot canyon walls kept most sections of the ride in the shade and it was noticably colder in the shady sections.
At the turnaround, Paul showed me his water bottle. He had some kind of energy drink in it and some of it had leaked out at the nozzle and formed a frozen, slurpee-like substance on the top of the bottle. It was nearing 10 am, but I guess it’s still pretty cold.
About a half hour later, Paul and I were on the return route back towards Moab. I reached for my water bottle. It was still full and that’s not a good thing when you’ve ridden 40 miles in two and a half hours. Like Paul’s water bottle, mine had a small ice cap around the nozzle.
We finished at noon. At the finish we had some lunch provided by the Festival. Despite temperatures still barely above freezing, it felt pretty warm sitting in the grass.
| Total distance: | 55.71 miles |
|---|---|
| Time: | 4:30:13 |
| Average speed: | 12.4 mph |
| Maximum speed: | 31.6 mph |
| Total calories: | 3692 |
| Average heart rate: | 133 bpm |
| Maximum heart rate: | 162 bpm |
| Total ascent: | 2372 feet |
| Total descent: | 2117 feet |
| Ride profile: |  |
| Ride comments: Today, we did the Colorado River ride. After leaving Moab, we take Scenic Byway 128 for about 24 miles and then we return along the same route. It was cold! I woke up at 6:30 am and it was 14 degrees. By the time of the mass start at 8 am, it was only 19 degrees. Just after the turnaround, a support vehicle shared with us the current temperature — 30 degrees. Despite the constant battle to stay warm, it was a beautiful day and beautiful scenery. |
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Wow, I can tell I still have my touring legs. I was fine going at a pace comfortable for me, but when the pace edged up, I got uncomfortable in a big hurry.
I was riding today with my friend and fellow cyclist, Paul Stempniak. We made the mistake of starting at the back of the four hundred or so cyclists that did the ride today. We casually advanced past riders as we headed out of town. By the time we crossed the Colorado River, we were basically at the front of all the riders. Well, all of them except for a group of thirty or forty that we could see about a half a mile ahead.
It’s much better (easier and more fun too) to ride in a large group of cyclists, so we quickly decided that we needed to bridge that gap. After three or four rotations where each of us was in the lead position for a short while, we had barely made a dent in that gap and that was even with the help of a slightly downhill stretch. We gave up on trying to catch the lead group. Three years ago when Paul and I did this same event, we had a similar gap to bridge. That time, however, we successfully caught the lead group and enjoyed the company of twenty or so other cyclists for the rest of the ride to the turnaound point. I pointed this out to Paul, who didn’t seem to upset about it because we had already found another reasonable group of six or seven other cyclists to ride with. Much smaller than the lead group, but it still helped a lot.
As we rounded a gradual turn in the road, we found a group of cyclists standing around the center line. Actually, they were all standing around a cyclist lying in the road — an obvious victim of some kind of crash. We had to assume the crash happened in the lead group because open road, single cyclist crashes on well-maintained pavement like this are extremely rare. Suddenly, I was glad we didn’t bridge that gap to the lead group.
We continued on in our group of eight cyclists for the remaining twelve miles or so to the turnaround point. The pace was 22 to 24 miles per hour on flat roads. This would have been a comfortable pace for me a couple years ago, but I spent most of 2006 riding at a touring pace of 15 to 20 miles per hour, so I was feeling quite UNcomfortable today. I took a couple pulls at the front, but most of the time, I was hanging to for dear life at the end of the peloton. I’m certainly not proud of that, but that’s the way it was.
The return was slower but equally uncomfortable because we didn’t have a large group of cyclists to ride with and the wind was picking up. Towards the end, I had to back off the pace a little more — I had three more days of riding to think about. Paul was kind enough to not leave me even though he was obviously stronger. In fact, later that afternoon, Paul climbed back on his bicycle and participated in a time trial. It’s a five mile hill climb on Sand Flats Road which goes past the Slick Rock Trail parking lot. I had signed up for the time trial, but I decided it really wasn’t a good idea. Instead I went and took some photos of the cyclists as they rode past the Slick Rock Trail entrace. Below are some photos from the time trial:
| Total distance: | 47.84 miles |
|---|---|
| Time: | 3:32:19 |
| Average speed: | 13.5 mph |
| Maximum speed: | 32.1 mph |
| Total calories: | 3688 |
| Average heart rate: | 140 bpm |
| Maximum heart rate: | 174 bpm |
| Total ascent: | 906 feet |
| Total descent: | 906 feet |
| Ride profile: |  |
| Ride comments: This data is from the ride that Paul and I did in the morning. It started in Moab and headed out the Potash road to just past the potash plant and then it returned to Moab on the same route. |
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I’m on the road again! I’m in Moab, Utah right now for the Moab Skinny Tire Festival which starts tomorrow. It’s four days of cycling to benefit the Lance Armstrong Foundation. I’m hoping it’s also four days of cycling in the sun and the beauty of the Canyonlands area.
I’m hoping to be able to do daily ride reports like I did while Pat and I were traveling the country on The Dream Tour. Just as important, I hope to be able to take some great photos to be able to share.
Tonight, as I was checking in, I met Dave Shields, the author of The Tour, a book about the Tour de France that I read recently. In fact, I wrote about reading The Tour in one of my earlier posts. It was a thrill to be able to meet him and tell him in person how much I enjoyed his book.
Now, it’s time to get some rest. Tomorrow is going to be a big day!
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