Life Pattern

Tag: bicycling

  • First Real Ride of the Season

    Yesterday, I finally got my bicycle back from the repair shop and we went for the first real bike ride this season. At the Rudopia transrodopi journey last year I had my bike’s rear derailleur bracket broken (twisted actually). I couldn’t find a spare bracket back then, we were in the middle of the Rodopi mountain after all, so I just straightened it with the help of an ordinary rock. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a spare bracket in Sofia either until this week. While I was at the repairman’s I changed the rear derailleur, because it was twisted as well, and the saddle stem, as the old one (a cheap Zoom) was too weak and kept loosening every couple of days.

    Although I really try to stick to the training plan I devised myself in order to prepare for the 100 km tour around Vitosha, I don’t always have the time for a proper ride. Quite often I have to substitute the cross country outing for loops at the nearby (West) park or even for the cross trainer session. But despite these obstacles I was glad to find out that my fitness level is good enough. Together with my brother Dave we covered 48 km and climbed 700 m in 02:50 h. We kept a moderate pace – according to the heart rate monitor my average heart rate for the whole exercise was 142 bpm. Not bad for so early in May.

    I remember some of my rides several years ago, I’d go for 20 km with 300-400 meters climbing, and Iā€™d be exhausted. It used to take me very long time to recover. Now I’m fitter even though I didn’t exercised much in the winter. I think this might be partially due to the low carb, high fat diet. I’ll cover low carb, high fat diet in more details in a future post.

  • Earth day 2008

    Earth flag

    On April 22 the Earth Day is celebrated with an estimated billion people participating in the activities in thousands of places around the globe. It is a day of awareness and appreciation of our beautiful Spaceship Earth. Earth Day is the only event celebrated simultaneously around the globe by people of all backgrounds, faiths and nationalities.

    In Bulgaria the Earth Day is officialy recognized as of April 22 1992 when president Zhelyu Zhelev affirmed the Earth oath.

    This year the Earth Day agenda here in Sofia includes:

    • 17:30 people gather at the Sofia University for a photography to be taken from the university’s roof
    • 18:30 cycling procession starts from the university along Vasil Levski Blvd, Vitosha Blvd and Graf Ignatiev St, joins the walking procession at the National Theatre “Ivan Vazov” and together they continue towards Borisova garden where there is a concert at the summer stage
    • 20:30 bikers rally at the Ariana pond for a night bike ride (bring head-lights etc.)

    And while we are talking about awareness watch this video:

    Did you manage to count how many passes does the team in white make?

  • 100 km around Vitosha

    On 1st of April my alarm went off to tell me that this year’s tour around Vitosha is just 3 months away and it’s about time to start preparing for the event.

    100 km around Vitosha is a cross-country hiking and biking tour around Vitosha mountain. The official site of the event is http://vitosha100km.hit.bg/. There you can find detailed map of the route, altitude profile, gps tracks (provided by my friend and colleague Nikolay Denev), gallery and the results from the previous year.

    When I’ve heard about the tour for the very first time I found it very appealing so I decided I should take part in it. Unfortunately I didn’t pay attention and missed the 2006 tour. I had to wait for the next one in 2007. I’ve tried to keep sober view on the fact that this is a 100 km tour with quite a few hills to ascend and it ain’t gonna be easy, especially if you try to keep pace. Yet I underestimated the effort.

    Me, my brother Dave and my friend Niki have never taken part in such a race so we decided to ride together and to try to complete it in 8 to 8:30 hours, having in mind that the best times from 2006 were just above 5 hours. It eventually took us 10:30 hours and I personally have never before felt so exhausted in my entire life. I think the main problem was that we didn’t know the terrain well so we tried to keep our average speed too high. Later it turned out (as you can see on the altitude profile) that almost all the climbing is in the first 50 km. Well, if we knew that we would have ridden at a lower speed and would have preserved our glycogen reserves so we wouldn’t have hit the wall so early.

    Here is the distribution of finish times from the 2007 tour:

    Distribution of finish times

    The green point is where we wanted to be, the yellow point is the median result and the red point is were we actually finished.

    Well, we didn’t perform very well but this has only motivated me to try harder this year. Moreover I’ve never been good at endurance sports and I’m very curious as to how far I could go if I try. On the other hand 3 months are not that long period and with my extremely busy schedule I don’t expect miracles.

    Watch this blog for updates šŸ™‚