Lack of snow on the local trails has made outdoor cycling in cold weather the preferred alternative to my stationary trainer. Yesterday was a great day at 28 degrees Farenheit with a wind of around 10 mph. I wanted to ride in snow flurries, but the snow that was predicted didn’t happen. Flurries would have been fun, but the important thing was that  I enjoyed a 23 mile round trip on the Minuteman Bikeway.

It was the second day in a row when I had an opportunity to test my toe warmers. I have used two brands, HotHands and Grabber, and both performed well. Both are made in the USA.

Toe warmers come as a pair in a plastic package and they are activated by opening the package, exposing them to the air. The warmers themselves are small envelopes with an adhesive backing. The warmers contain iron powder, water, salt, activated charcoal, and vermiculite, all of the ingredients needed for a low-energy thermite reaction to generate heat.

The adhesive allows you to stick them to your socks. Follow the instructions: there are warnings concerning proper use to avoid injury or harm. One of the warnings is that you should not apply the warmers directly to your skin.

The socks should be thick so that you get some insulation from them as well as retention of the heat generated by the warmer. They should be used with shoes that do not have mesh or vented toes. The warmers do not get very hot and vented toes will allow cold air to get into the shoes, reducing the heating effect to nearly zero. When it’s cold, I switch to platform pedals so that I can use cross training shoes with closed toes. I have used toe warmers in conditions slightly below freezing. In my opinion they would not be very effective below 20 degrees Fahrenheit, even with appropriate shoes.

When I am finished riding and remove the warmers from my socks, I leave them on a fireproof surface until they are completely dissipated. I am wary about throwing a thermite reaction into the trash where it could cause a fire. They don’t get very hot, but I would rather be safe.

Toe warmers have made cold weather rides much more comfortable for me. Layering over legs and body is also important. Under my helmet I wear a stretch head covering that has a flap that I can use to cover my mouth. I stretch the hood of my sweatshirt over my helmet to cover the air holes. You can buy helmet covers that will also serve that purpose. I use insulated mittens on my hands.

All of this preparation has made riding enjoyable for me below freezing. As long as the trails are snow-free, this extends my cycling season and keeps me in training for tours. My low temperature riding threshold is probably 20 degrees Farenheit, but fortunately the winter is mild and that hasn’t happened very often this year. Still, I will be very happy when spring arrives.

David Romanowski commented on my Cycling over 60 (or over 70) post. He stated that he personally strives for a cadence in the neighborhood of 90 when touring. After giving that a try on my training rig and having some difficulty, I decided to research the topic.

Cadence is the count of the number of complete revolutions of the chain wheel per minute. To measure cadence you can purchase a cadence sensor or count the number of times a pedal reaches a specific point in the stroke. For example, if I want to use the motion of my right foot to count cadence, I will count the number of times per minute that my right foot reaches the bottom of the stroke.

There is a simple formula that expresses the relationship between cadence and two other important factors in cycling: power = force x cadence. This says that the same power output is achieved by either high pedal force and low cadence or by low pedal force and high cadence. The formula tells me that on a tour where endurance is important I want to achieve a constant, sustainable power output, varying the force on the pedals and the cadence to achieve that output. My personal experience doesn’t contradict the formula.

My training rig does a good job of simulating conditions of cycling on a flat surface by providing adequate resistance for the rear wheel. I couldn’t get to a cadence of 90 and the best that I could sustain for any length of time was in the 70s. My comfort level is below that in the 60s. I can maintain the 60s for hours. If I were on a tour and geared down to sustain the 70s, I wouldn’t be going very fast. In the 60s, I can do between 15 and 18 miles per hour on the flats in the earlier hours of the day. In the 70s, that would drop to 13 to 14 miles per hour since I would need to gear down unless I want to output more power. If I gear up and try to sustain the 70s, I would still be mashing the pedals with more force to keep up the pace and I would become exhausted sooner. I experience a positive change in my performance as I increase the cadence in the effort to go fast, but it is short lived. The strategy works in a sprint, for example, up a short hill or passing a gaggle of riders. At the end of the sprint, I feel the burn. On long hills, I’m better off in the 60s and geared as low as needed to sustain my cadence.

The physiology of cadence is interesting, but doesn’t give you any actionable information. There are different muscle fibers that are employed by your body at high cadence rates than at low rates. It still falls to you to determine the rates that are best for you because there is no magic cadence. If you are mashing the pedals up a hill, you will discover the low rate fibers by the burn in your thighs. If you have enough range in your gear set, you instinctively shift down and increase your cadence to avoid the burn. If you are spinning on the flats and making good time, the high rate fibers are doing their job. With a paved surface or a tail wind it may be possible to shift up a gear and keep spinning. I don’t need to know the physiology to make those things happen. I do need to understand the basic power, force, and cadence relationship.

There is some consistency on the Internet in the topic of cadence. The trouble is that most discussions approach the topic from the point of view of a race or triathlon. For a race or triathlon the objective is speed for a short amount of time as opposed to the endurance needed by a touring cyclist.

Coach David Glover offers what I consider the best answer to the question of proper cadence in his YouTube video. His recommendation: use whatever cadence you use in training or between 60 and 80 revolutions per minute for amateur or recreational athletes. On the road on tours, I have rarely seen fellow bicycle tourists cranking along at rates of 80 or greater. That doesn’t mean that a cadence of 90 is bad; it means that it is not for everybody. The Global Cycling Network did a non-scientific experiment, also shown on YouTube, which you can do at home except for the part where blood is drawn. This provides another answer: the ideal cadence is the one at which you are most comfortable.

Those of us who tour need to keep this in mind as we train. We need to train at the cadence that will be optimal for each of us individually. During training one personal goal for me is to set a target cadence that I can sustain for 50 to 70 miles per day for seven days or more. That done, the most important thing to do on the road is to be changing gears to account for changing conditions and grades to be able to sustain the target cadence. One of the changing conditions that I experience is that I get tired toward the end of the day.

Personally, this is a satisfying result since it fits all sizes. The summary: do the cadence that feels best for you. Intuitively, I felt that I was in the correct zone with my personal cadence in the 60s. There is no magic, effortless cadence. You will always need to exert force on the pedals to keep moving, sustain a cadence, and make progress on the trail. For a bicycle tourist, there is a balance that is required to achieve endurance and that balance of factors is likely different for each of us.

By the way, I wouldn’t waste your money on a cadence sensor. Measure your cadence using a watch. It won’t take long for you to determine your comfort zone and to be able to judge it by the way you feel.

To my knowledge, there are no shoes that are designed specifically for cycling in cold weather. When it’s cold, I abandon my clipless pedals for platform pedals. The shoes that I use with clipless pedals fit tight and are not large enough to accommodate layers of socks. My feet turn into ice cubes in the shape of fashionable footwear.

Before I rode today (32 degrees Fahrenheit) I decided to take a trip to Dick’s Sporting Goods to get shoes that would be warmer than the ones that I’ve been using. The shoes that I have been using have mesh in the toe area of the shoe. When it’s cold, the mesh allows cold air to circulate to my toes. The mesh makes it almost as bad as wearing just socks.

I found New Balance Training shoes that have covered toes and also come in wide sizes. I put on two layers of socks and tried on a pair of extra wide shoes. My opinion is that the extra width provides more room for insulating layers of socks. They were comfortable and I paid $49.99 for them. That’s a lot less expensive than my Shimano shoes.

My experience with these shoes is that they are better than the mesh ones that I was using. My toes got cold, but it wasn’t as bad as it was with the other shoes. There are still some things that I can do to improve the insulating value of the socks by using better socks designed for cold weather.

If you are looking for shoes to use for cycling in cold weather, they don’t need to be the same brand that I chose. They need to have a similar design with a covered toe and enough room for sock layers. They can’t be laced very tight, either, since that would decrease the blood flow to portions of your feet. Another consideration is that the sole of the shoe should not have an aggressive tread since that would not work well with platform pedals. A reasonably flat sole works best, assuming that the pedals have some kind of gripping surface. My platform pedals have studs.

If all of this fails, there is always camouflaged insulated hunting boots.

Today I could have jumped into my car to drive a mile to the nearest Starbucks. Instead, I hopped on my bike and rode 11.4 miles from Bedford to Somerville to get my coffee. I celebrated the burning of the calories by eating a blueberry scone with the coffee. It was 35 degrees Fahrenheit with a 30 mile per hour wind.

Hunting with my Father prepared me for these rides. We would get out of bed long before daybreak and dress with many layers. The layers were not especially effective in the temperatures that we experienced. Many times the temperature hovered around zero as we hiked the corn fields in search of game. The constant effort of stepping over corn stalks in fields filled with snow served to keep my blood flowing and eventually to warm my extremities.

As I grew older I became less interested in hunting and the distance grew between my Father and me. Still, on my cold weather rides I often think of the discipline that I developed in the corn fields. Thanks to my Dad, there are lots of things that I can not only endure, but also enjoy.

For the second year in a row I achieved my goal of riding a total of at least 3,000 miles. That includes three tours of over 300 miles each. That’s an average of a little over 57 miles per week. The tours help to increase the average because they are usually done during a one week period.

I’m always curious about what other cyclists are able to achieve in a year and I meet a lot of people on tours who claim more miles. Since I know what it takes to do 3K, I believe that some of the claims are exaggerated. In the fall I rode with a guy from New Hampshire who claimed 5,000 miles per year. That’s almost 100 miles per week, rain or snow, sweltering hot or freezing cold. The claim probably stretches the truth a bit, especially for New Hampshire.

A couple of years ago I met a guy from Seattle who claimed 6,000 miles per year for an average of about 115 miles per week. I talked with him about that at the time. He was able to accumulated miles by commuting to work almost daily. The total mileage works out to about a 12 mile one-way commute each day at about 45 minutes in each direction. When I was working my car commute was about 45 minutes, so that’s in the realm of possibility.

I’m very certain of my mileage because all of my rides are recorded. I like to keep an accurate record and I like to analyze the data year-to-year. The data is also useful for planning bicycle maintenance. I use the Strava app on my iPhone for training rides and a Garmin handheld for tours. The battery life is much better for the Garmin than the iPhone on tours. I upload the Garmin gpx files to Strava so that my mileage data is all in one place.

It is fortunate that the past two years have had acceptable temperatures during the cold weather riding months and the snow cover has not been a problem. I can ride down to about 25 degrees Fahrenheit. Once the snow flies, I’m done. The major factor is that whether it is hot or cold outside, I love riding a lot.

Recently I searched for information on bicycle training for people over 60. At this time, I happen to be in that tier and in December 2015 I bound into the next higher tier. Much of the training information on the Internet is geared toward racing and competitive cycling.

Instead my objective is to be able to enjoy bicycle touring for as long as I can. Also, I’ve never been an athlete. The difference between an athlete and me is that I’m training for endurance and not speed. I want to be able to ride up to 70 miles and have something left at the end of the day.

With that in mind, I will talk about the things that work for me. I’m not a sports training or physiology expert, but after my first 400 mile self-supported tour in 2012 I have successfully done about 1000 miles in bicycle tours each year . I have toured with groups and have also done self-planned tours.

There is a more scientific approach by Richard Raforth, MD, in his article on Aging and Physical Performance. His Cycling Performance Tips site covers a number of other cycling topics. He covers bicycle racing, but also discusses distance touring.

My interest in touring came late in life and I am fortunate to be fit and healthy enough to jump in as I did. I envy some of the people that I meet who have done more ambitious tours when they were younger such as trans-America and Ireland to Sicily. I have also met many people like me who love the adventure of a 300 to 400 mile self-supported ride. In any case, the rides don’t come for free without personal investment in training.

Annual rides for me total about 3000 miles, including 2000 training miles and 1000 touring miles. When the weather is acceptable, I do two or three 25 mile rides each week, sometimes four. Acceptable weather is no rain and no snow on the ground. Otherwise, I find that riding in the cold, or on hot and humid days, or on windy days prepares me for most kinds of weather on the trail.

My average speed over a 25 mile training ride is 14 to 16 miles per hour. At the halfway point I always stop for a short break to hydrate and snack. My average speeds on a tour, whether fully loaded or unloaded, tend to be around 10 miles per hour. One of the differences is that on a tour my daily mileage is often between 50 and 70 miles. Another factor on a tour is that I spend a lot of time enjoying the scenery and attractions along the way.

I record all of my rides and I keep a spreadsheet of my training rides. I record my training rides using the Strava app on my iPhone and I record my tours on a GPS handheld device. I use the GPS on tours because it makes better use of batteries. I have a Strava Premium Membership that adds the capability to compare my performance with others in my age or weight group. The objective of my spreadsheet is to understand my performance from season to season and from year to year. The goal is to sustain my performance over time.

Sustaining performance means that sometimes a ride is going to burn. The muscle burn means that you are working hard and that you are striving. Muscles will recover quickly from the workout as long as you avoid injury. At my age I strive to avoid anything that could cause an injury and a recuperation period off the bike.

To sustain performance, I almost always ride the same two trails for training. I have memorized the grades and I understand the performance that I need to achieve on each segment. I know where I need to crank a little harder to get up a grade. I know where I need to shift gears to keep my cadence up on the downhill grades.

Cadence is the number of complete revolutions per minute that you achieve on the crank. I’ve seen people recommend a cadence of 80 or 90, which I think is high. A comfortable and sustainable cadence for me is somewhere in the 60 to 75 range. I will choose a gear that allows me to continue that cadence up hills, against the wind, and at slow speeds when fatigued. Likewise downhill or going fast. My downhill caveat is that I don’t like to go much over 25 miles per hour for safety reasons.

Every once in a while my competitive nature kicks in. It happens like this. I’ll see a rider closing from behind and I will start cranking a little harder. If I’m passed, I make a decision: shall I pace this person or ease off and drop back, maintaining my own pace? The decision is easy when a twenty-something passes me and clearly is sustaining speeds 10 miles an hour or more faster than me. In some cases, I will stretch myself to keep up, sometimes for 6 to 10 miles all the way to the trail head. Those are usually great rides for me because they push me to the upper limit of my performance and I get a great feeling of achievement.

The point is that it is important to challenge yourself. I respect people who get onto the trail and lope along because at least they are making an effort to exercise. But you need to challenge yourself if you want to maintain your physiological capabilities or at least minimize the decline as you age. The health benefits of this approach are well documented.

The bicycle that you use on training rides is also, in my opinion, important. My philosophy is that you should train on the bicycle that you plan to use on tours. Bicycle geometry, tires, and gearing are critical factors for comfortable and safe touring. There are many other factors, but in my view these are most important in the kinesiology of cycling. Even if you do not tour, using the same bicycle for all of your training rides makes it much easier to understand your performance since the bicycle is constant. There are lots of other things such as weather that are not constant. If your performance varies, it is best when the bicycle is not another variable to decipher in the equation.

Finally, many of us need to deal with medications. On a recent tour our tour director reflected the demographic of the ride by urging us, “Remember to take your meds.” As a corollary, your doctor needs to know that you plan to exercise and how much you plan to exercise.

In some cases, the dosage may change based on events or symptoms that can occur during a tour and your doctor can help to establish your requirements. You should never change dosage unless under the supervision of a doctor. You need to understand how your medications affect your performance, including the effects of increased or decreased dosage.

In my case, my cardiologist prescribed a beta blocker to control an irregular heartbeat. This originally manifested itself as a high heart rate that I couldn’t control. The cardiologist told me that if I happened to be on a ride or otherwise experienced a high rate, I could take an additional dose or two of the beta blocker. On my very first tour I experienced some rate problems in camp one evening. I took an extra dose. After a while nothing happened and I took another dose. I was up to three times my normal evening dose. The next day I couldn’t get my heart rate to sustain the blood flow to my muscles. I didn’t last long. I found a motel in early afternoon and crashed for a couple of hours to recover.

I love cycling and I’ve learned a lot about it and about my body in the past couple of years. Training rides and tours help me to feel better physically and mentally. Cycling won’t stop the ageing process, but the low impact exercise gives us a chance at being healthy as we age.

Just yesterday I was nearing the trailhead on one of my favorite training routes. As I rounded a curve there were three people standing over a guy on the ground. He was sitting and rubbing the top of his head. “I’m a good rider. This has never happened before.” He was almost in tears, probably in pain as the police officer approached with the first aid bag. It looked like he didn’t make the turn, caught his front wheel in the dirt, and flipped into a utility pole, head first.

He wasn’t wearing a helmet. If you are reading this, you probably don’t need an admonition to wear your helmet. There are many others who need to be aware of the risks of riding without one. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a person with a head injury as the result of failing to use a helmet on the trail.

There are too many riders who think that this kind of mishap is a long shot and they are willing to take the risk. I see all kinds of people in very fashionable head gear: colorful knit caps, baseball caps, and sweat bands. On most days my riding clothes don’t even match, but at least I have my helmet.

When I look at data I almost always try to make sense of it. As an engineering manager later in my career I became interested in interpreting all kinds of data to understand the performance of the organization on projects. When I looked at the Adventure Cycling Association Ride Registry data I wondered how the data might be interpreted. The registry contains tour information that includes participant age, number of riders, number of days, length of the tour in miles, weight of the gear, and number of flats experienced. There appear to be over 3400 rides registered in the data base. I wondered, “Where do I fit in these data?” and “What does it mean?”

Caution is needed to avoid interpreting this data in too much detail. First of all, it is a database of voluntarily submitted ride data. That means that it may not be representative of touring cyclists at large. Second, it seems to be skewed toward very long rides of a thousand miles or more, which may indicate that people who accomplish them feel that they are worth sharing. In contrast, someone who completes a 300 mile tour may not feel that it was enough of an achievement to share.

There are a number of interesting things about the data nevertheless. The age of the riders is reasonably evenly distributed between the ages of eighteen and sixty five. Under seventeen and over sixty five, the numbers fall off dramatically. The under seventeen people are probably less likely to travel on their own because they are still dependent on their parents. Over sixty five people may be reaching the age when they can no longer perform at the level necessary for a sustained tour. It may also mean that the people less than sixty five with a zeal for bicycle touring have not yet aged into the over sixty five group. In our society people are more able to remain active to a later age and the drop-off at 65 may change with time. Since I’m 69 years old myself, I’m hoping that my cycling career isn’t ending anytime soon.

69% of the registered tours had one or two participants. 38% had just one person on the tour. That aligns with my personal experience on the trail. People travel in pairs or alone because it is difficult to find people who have a similar interest in bicycle touring and have the same physical abilities. You would think that large group rides would swamp those numbers, but less than 20% of the registered rides are organized, commercial rides that would have many more riders.

As a person who prefers tours that are one to two weeks in duration, I was surprised to see the large number of registered tours that far exceed two weeks. 51% of the tours had durations from 31 to 100 days. 41% were in my range of from two to thirty days. The remainder was almost evenly split along the edges. That correlates well with the tour distances: 59% in the 1001 to 5000 mile range and 39% from 101 to 1000 miles.

Gear weight was reported to fall within the range of 21 to 75 pounds 77% of the time. Another way to look at the data is that gear weight falls into the moderate range of 31 to 50 pounds 44% of the time, while light loads of one to thirty pounds were carried 30% of the time and heavy loads of over 51 pounds 25% of the time. This of course means that travelling for longer periods of time doesn’t translate to the need to carry more gear.

The flat tire data seems to indicate that 32% of the tours experienced no flat tires based on the assumption that I correctly inferred the number of rides recorded in the registry. Of the 68% of the tours reporting flats, 43% were in the range of one to three flats and 57% of the tours reported four or more flats suggesting a correlation with trip duration. That means that you can expect to have a flat if you ride a tour of any appreciable duration.

There is no action that I would take and there is nothing that I would do differently based on this data. The interesting thing for me is that it supports my thinking on these topics except for one thing: I don’t understand how so many people have the ability to take off on a bicycle tour for one to three months. I’m jealous.

This year the tour started on 20 September in Arlington, VA, and ended on 26 September in Pittsburgh, PA. I was impressed with the experienced director, mechanic, and staff from Adventure Cycling Association who made the ride interesting and a lot of fun. You can read more about the tour and my impressions of touring with ACA.

This year I opted to take the C&O and GAP tour offered by Adventure Cycling Association that started on 20 September in Arlington, Virginia, and ended in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on 26 September. It was a fully supported ride and I enjoyed it very much. This was the first time that I used ACA and I found the staff and tour director knowledgeable and experienced. I rode this route from Pittsburgh to Georgetown last year self-supported, but I still found the sights and attractions interesting and picturesque and discovered some new ones. During the first six days from Arlington to Connellsville I took the time to stop and enjoy many of those things.

When I rolled out of the camp in Connellsville at 8 AM I realized that there isn’t much to see on the final 55 mile leg into Pittsburgh. Still, I stopped to take a picture a few miles into the ride and George, one of the staff, caught up with me. We rode together and chatted until we arrived at the first water stop.

We snacked at the water stop and refilled our water bottles. The stop was run by two of the ACA staff, Chris and Karen. Suddenly Chris said, “Hey! It’s Don.” He was surprised to see Don so soon.

Don was the “sweep”, the person on staff who was riding last to make sure that nobody was left behind. That made me the last rider. I didn’t think that would be possible. I thought that there were some bikes still in camp when I left there.

I rode hard to the second and last water stop. Along the way I passed Paul. “Great!” I thought, “Now he will be last.”

When I arrived at the second water stop, there were eight to ten riders there. They left while I was eating lunch and snacking. Paul rolled in, followed by another rider, Peter. The appearance of Peter was a surprise: he must have been behind Don at the previous water stop and I just missed him. I left while Paul and Peter were eating.

When I got to McKeesport I saw someone catching up with me from behind. I thought, “It couldn’t be one of the two riders that I left behind at the water stop. They are not strong riders. Or could it be that one of them decided to put on a sprint?”

For a moment I put that out of my mind and pedaled a little harder. Suddenly I was surprised when someone pulled up next to me and said, “Hi, Ed.” It was Don! I was going to be the last rider to finish. Don told me that the two other guys at the water stop decided to take a truck ride into Pittsburgh.

Don and I rode into Pittsburgh at a good pace. When we got within two miles of the end he told me that we were zipping along at 16-17 miles per hour and that was the fastest he ever rode sweep into Pittsburgh. It was then that he also told me that a bunch of people decided not to ride at all that day and were trucked from Connellsville to Pittsburgh.

At about that time we spotted Dave, another of our riders, in front of us. Dave was one of the slower riders. Don suggested I ride ahead since he needed to stay rearward with Dave.

I rode ahead until I saw a great shot of the Pittsburgh skyline. As a stopped to take the picture Dave and Don rode past me. Dave got to the end of the ride before me. I blew my last chance to avoid being last.