Yani Has H.A.D.

Just a quick follow up to my previous about my encounter with Miami Springs PD .  I was out on the Lario's ride this morning and during the warm up I hear two of the guys behind me talking about riding in Miami Springs.  He mentions how he's been stopped on a 2 lane divided road (2 lanes in each direction) for obstructing traffic when there hasn't been a car around and even if there was, it would've had another lane.  He's completely in the right, just as we were in our original situation.  I described the officer to him, and yep... Same guy.  Either he hates cyclists, hates people having a good time while exercising, or is just completely ignorant of the laws he's paid to uphold.

I actually hadn't been to Miami Springs since November because during Standard Time it gets dark too early to get any meaningful riding done there.  Now that the time changed we decided to go back on Thursday and WOW the people there can't drive.  I had two cars pass close enough that I could've kicked them if I wanted, and I'm amazed that one didn't actually brush my bars. This was on a single lane road with no cars coming in the opposite direction, so it would've been easy for them go all the way into the left lane and not get anywhere near us, but wheres the fun in that right? Douchebags. Another time a driver makes a left onto the two lane road we're traveling on but does it extremely slowly while he has cars coming at him.  The cars coming had plenty of time to slow down safely and I didn't want one of them to hit me while trying to wild passing maneuver so I take the lane.  did that make a difference?  Of course not, some car still managed to squeeze through again passing me by inches.  At that point I decided that I will take the lane on any two lane road and will continue to do it from now on whenever I ride in Miami Springs.  If that cop want's to give me a ticket for it, I'll see him court. I rather pay the fine that might buy him an updated law book than get killed by an idiot, but more importantly I rather take him to court so he can learn what the law is and get it on the record so he can't harass anyone else.  

Let me close this by saying I have nothing against LEO's.  A few of my friends are LEO's and I spent a long time wanting to be one as well, and might still pursue it one day.  I just hate idiots, regardless of their profession.  

The first group ride I'd say was a great success. No flats, no crashes and best of all, we didn't get dropped. We were expecting a huge turn out but the main organizer was recently injured in a crash so the group has been getting smaller. Including us we had I think 8 riders and picked up a guy in a single speed Felt along the way. That guy was a pretty strong rider, and I loved the looks of his bike. The ride was with Bird Road Cycle World, and they were a nice group of people.
 
The ride started off with an easy warm up aroun th neighborhood and we turned up the speed when we hit Sunset and kept it up the rest of the way to Blackpoint, about 18 miles. We hung out at the marina and refueled for the return ride.
 
We passed a lot of sections of Miami that I had never seen but sadly at the speed we were going, I couldn't get any pics. I know I know... I suck at blogging :/
 
On the return ride we had a bit faster average, and I tried to stick to the front on Alex's wheel for the best draft. Sadly for Alex nobody in the group could provide a very good draft for him but it's better than nothing. If anything I wish the ride was a bit longer, I felt pretty fresh at the end of the 40 miles and couldve done a bit more. On the way home I knocked out a 31 mph sprint which proves I still had some energy left.
 
Overall I loved it and being done with the ride by 10am is great. They had some sick bikes too, Cervelos and Looks, tons of carbon and deep section wheels. Zipps make a scary sound rolling down the road! I can't wait for next one!

Honestly?  Its not anywhere near as bad as I expected.  Could it have been better? Sure.  Could it have been worse? Definitely.  

Waking up at 5:30 on a Saturday is FTL but after I dragged ass out of bed and into the shower (I thought it would give me a “pick me up”) I was starting to get excited and the wooziness was going away.  Met up at Alex’s with him and Eddy at 6:40 and loaded up the car.  Oh I forgot to mention it before, but I got the bike rack done:

Anywho, we got the bikes loaded and the equipment in Alex’s truck and headed down to the busway by US1 and 152 st.  We started further south than usual because riding the Busway for the most part sucks badly.  The lights taunt you, they either turn red right before you can cross them, or turn green the second you unclip. With a light every mile for about 15 miles its not a good time at all.  I’m not sure what time we got on the bikes but it was probably like 7:45 or 8am, we’re like a bunch of girls getting ready and take forever to get going.  We took off down the busway and were enjoying the weather, it was in the mid 80’s and clear skies with no wind.  A big difference from last week.  

Once we got off  the busway we headed west and started leaving civilization far far behind.  As Alex acknowledges how far out we are we suddenly hear a pop/bang and I thought he popped a spoke, luckily he had just some how kicked the tail light off his bike.  That was our first stop.

Another few miles in Eddy gets chased by some vicious dogs and lays down his fastest sprint of the day.  Ok maybe they werent vicious, they probably weighed 20 pounds lol but that was the best laugh of the day.  Luckily for me Eddy wore them down and when I rode by they just looked at me with a “the hell with it” face on.  A few seconds later I look back and WhereTF is Alex?  I look back and fuuuuuu he’s pulled over, turns out he got a flat.

Homestead is basically rural farm land, cars are few and far between and open space is abundant:
1.

Click here to download:

video.mov (6868 KB)

Quite the difference from the urban jungle that most of miami is.  At the end of that stretch of road we end up on
392 st sw 217 ave.  I can assure you most Miamians have probably never even driven that far south.  
4.

5.

And because I love autostitching

It came out a bit blurry, but I think the colors look pretty cool.

And I don’t know what was going on here.

I think I was scared of dropping my phone at 20 mph but I don’t look pleased.  Ladies I assure you, I don’t usually look like this.

A bit after that we got to Roberts fruit stand

That was around mile 28, also the point formally known as good riding weather.  Lovely Miami, it went from being a glorious day to dark, cold, windy, and raining.  The weather remained crappy for the rest of the ride even though it only rained for the next 15 or so miles.  But after that it doesn’t matter since the floor is already wet and no drafting is possible.  Unless of course you enjoy getting sprayed in the face by a jet stream of water.  

At that point we started deviating from the original map in order to stay in the calmer parts of the storm, I was worried we wouldn’t make it to the 100 KM mark.  With a combination of the Garmin and Google maps on the iPhone we were able to navigate around homestead with no problem and in the end we made it to 62.69 miles, just past the century mark WOOOHOOOOO.

I don’t really have much to say about the second half of the ride, it was pretty miserable in the rain, and we were plagued by flat tires. Here’s Alex trying to kill my road morph!

 

(download)

Click here to download:

video.mov (6279 KB)

 Again, I keep impressing myself though, after the 40 mile mark my legs came alive and I started messing with the virtual partner feature on the garmin where you race a “virtual” bike.  For a long stretch of rode I was up in the 19-20 mph range without any fatigue what so ever, just pedaling up front by myself.  I didn’t think I could have that kind of energy so far into the ride.  I was feeling good until basically mile 61 then I just wanted to finish.  I did do a sprint at the end and made it up to 29mph which I was happy with considering I had already been on the bike for 62 miles at that point and the floor was really wet.  

Alex as usual is a beast on the bike.  And Eddy shocked us, he hung with no problem even though he’s barely been on the bike in the past month or more.  When he gets back into the grove we’re all screwed.  
Notice the pruned up fingers and wet screen.  Good Times!

I’m glad we did it, it proved we can, and we didn’t do bad considering we only drafted for maybe 10-15 miles of the ride, we each basically rode solo centuries.  
Now I’m going to go clean the bike AGAIN, lube it up and short my cable housings.  They’re annoying me since they’re so long.

 

and i almost forgot. The Garmin "Datalogs" : http://connect.garmin.com/player/12645043

And the mapmyride info: http://www.mapmyride.com/route/us/fl/miami/290125218006480939

 

And thanks to Eddy for the fritas! 

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www.YanielCantelar.com – Cycling
www.Yaniel.com - Everything

Tags » autostitch biking century cyling flat tires garmin homestead miami rain road biking (0 Comments)

Today was my version of Christmas, and the nice mail lady was Santa.  She dropped of the my new saddle, the Garmin, some tubes, and a fork/skewer mount thing to attach the bike to the floor of my car.  Being the gadget geek that I am, I haven’t been able to put down the Garmin Edge 305 since it got here, after using this, I don’t even know why I wasted time on the Forerunner 50.  It has more data than I can even remember to care about.  The logs are awesome, the gps is tracking kicks ass, and tomorrow I’m going to try out the course navigation.  

I also got the Forté Pro SLX saddle, its a little harsher than my old saddle, but that’s expected since it weighs half as much and has waay less padding.  After 25 miles though I wasn’t hurting at all, so far so good.  But I feel much more efficient with it, I can really bring up the cadence and I don’t have any bouncing like I did before.  I really holds me in place too. I don’t slip around on it at all, even in today’s rain.   I didn’t think it would make much difference in my speed but I was wrong.  My best in the saddle effort with the old saddle was about 24.5 mph maybe 25, with the new one and not even trying to do it, I hit 27 mph today.  2 mph from the lack of bouncing and sliding.  I’m stoked.

You can probably see it in the pic, the back tire is flat. Why? I don’t know.  It was fine before I went to take the pics and now it loses 100 psi in under 30 seconds.  Good thing I got those spare tubes.  

I rode with Alex and Eddy in Miami Springs today, good time but soaking wet.  The rain stopped before we got there but the roads were still wet, it wasn’t bad though since the water kept us cool.  The entire time I’m riding I’m making sure to stay away from the lines. I kept having memories of the TDF riders sliding on there faces and breaking stuff after touching the street lines in the rain.  The ride was 25 miles long, and like is becoming the norm, I did my share of the pulling.  Also made a few 30 mph sprints and like I mentioned before, hit 27 mph in the saddle.  I’m getting really excited about my progress, hopefully it keeps going.  
Here’s all the data from today’s ride:
http://connect.garmin.com/player/12461627

We’re planning to do a Metric on Saturday in Homestead and this time we intend to finish it.  We’re going to concentrate on hydration and nutrition since we think that’s what killed us last week.  Here’s the route I planned so far, just need to have it approved by the “committee.”
http://www.mapmyride.com/ride/united-states/fl/homestead/776125194443643072

I put it into the Garmin and hopefully it doesn’t get us lost!

Bed time, gotta wash the bike tomorrow.  The poor thing is filthy.
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www.YanielCantelar.com – Cycling
www.Yaniel.com - Everything

     

Click here to download:

New_Saddle_Garmin_Edge_305_x_M.zip (5103 KB)