At the HOT Rally I bought this Bacchetta Ti Aero. About 22 lbs with 650c lightweight wheels.

A couple of days ago I was able to ride the bike a little around the neighborhood and dial-in the fitting.

Today I went on my first long ride with it - 51 miles. Faster than my other non-faired bikes (Musashi, Baron, P-38). Slower than the F-40.

Once fitted, it is an extremely easy bike to ride. Coasts like crazy and solid as a rock.

This will be my ride-with-others bike. The F-40 is a leave-others-in-the-dust bike.

Nice easy ride to Salado and back (mostly) with Brian Buckmaster.

Since I’m so out of shape I mostly coasted whenever I could.

SunCity was having a vendor fair today. EasyStreet Recumbents had a nice double booth there. Rode the F-40 out to Sun City and back to show my support.

Bike Changes

Kept getting flat tires with all of the road debris from the winter rain months. Put the Marathon Supremes back on for a while - they are bomb-proof. I could not get those thick sidewall tires to fit into my skinny deep-v carbon rims so now I’m back to the original tires and rims.

Yellow spandex looks like new after Robyn washed it yesterday. Cool water, gentle cycle washing machine, layout over a couple of chairs in the garage to dry.

By the numbers

Hit every stoplight and had some issues with restarting my garmin. Overall it was about 15 miles round-trip even though the garmin shows less.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/464905488

Well, I sold the BatBike.

The Baron was a fun bike, always lots of comments at rides, I put almost 1,000 miles on it.

The summer of 2012 was big time Baron:

• Katy Flatland 100 Mile Century ride in just under 6 hours averaging 17.1 mph for the 100 miles.
• Austin to Shiner GASP ride - 100 miles
• Georgetown Poppy Ride - 86 miles
• Bosque Tour de Norway - 43 miles
• Tour d’Italia - 40 miles
• Vineyard Tour de Florence - 63 miles
• Tour de Longneques - 36 miles
• Several training rides of 27.2 miles averaging over 18 mph (never quite made 19 mph).

It went to a great home - congrats Billy Younts!

During the HOT Rally I was ask how do I find out about all the rides I go to?

Well there are several websites I visit to build a ride calendar for myself.

I have these bookmarked under a single tab on my browser.

	http://www.texbiker.net/blog/calendar/ Information about rides all across Texas organized by date.
	http://www.bicycle-stuff.com Mainly focuses on the DFW area but does have rides all across Texas. Click thru to the 2014 Calendar.
	http://lifeonabaron.blogspot.com Lots of detail about rides within a 500 mile radius of DFW including AR, OK and LA. Mainly focuses on very flat rides in the Houston area. Very fast rider on a low-racer. Search the archives to find prior yearly rides the current calendar sites to find the dates for this year.
	http://austincycling.org/rides/non_aca Mostly rides in the Austin TX area. Some very big rides far away.

What a blast the Heart of Texas (HOT) Recumbent rally was!

The fast ride (Warrior ride) consisted of two velomobiles and two F-40 streamliners.

With no other uprights, or unfaired recumbents along, the pace was quite brisk. Even counting the time we stopped to help other people, the rest stop and a tire change we still averaged 15.5 mph for the 35 mile ride.

This is the first time I have ever ridden with a group that had the same ride dynamics as myself. Never a rest on this ride. Usually when I get to the bottom of a hill everyone else is a LONG WAY behind me. Today everyone was right on my butt - time to keep peddling. Fortunately the F-40 is significantly lighter than the Quest so I was able to recover while climbing the next hill.

On the way back from Coupland there was a significant headwind, maybe 10 to 12 mph. I wasn’t really paying much attention to the wind because everyone else on the ride was just easily keeping up with me running about 18 mph directly into the wind. After a few miles I noticed we were catching an upright group that had left the reststop about 20 minutes before us. They must have been struggling riding directly into the 12 mph headwind. I think they had to have been doing less than 9 mph because we caught and passed them pretty easily. Aerodynamics rule!

The starting group (left to right):

• Dan Hansen : Lightning F-40
• Steve Wood : Quest Velomobile
• Carl Murdock : Lightning F-40
• Suzanne Teshera : Quest Velomobile

The ride was incredibily scenic.

Although, other people who saw our vehicles must have been really confused.

Suzanne took a great picture of Carl and I riding up towards the New Sweden Church:

And the very funny facebook comments from non-recumbent riders:

Some good pictures by Carl Murdock:

By the numbers:

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/450634871

http://app.strava.com/activities/115716381

All things techy

Taught by Professors Hansen and Younts about riding technology, which will cover all things tech toy – electronic wonders that tell you everything from how fast you go, far you go, how long it takes you to do it, horoscope, newspaper - oh okay maybe not ALL of that, but most of it! I don’t know enough about it to even explain the class. Class ends at 10:50. Take 10 and then head to the next class.

Enjoying the ride

Things you wear

• Shoes
• Gloves
• Helmets
• Jerseys
• Other clothing (running?)

Things for your bike

• Lights
• Bags
• Hydration
• Music
• Tires
• Kickstands
• Electric Assist

Computers

• GPS
• Garmin
• Cell Phone
  • Quad Lock
• Sensors
  • Heart Rate Monitor
  • Cadence
  • Power
• Cameras
• Video
  • Mounting
  • Dashware

Sharing the ride

Facebook

• Posting
• Notes
• History

Sport Specific

• Garmin Connect
• Strava
• MapMyRide

Blogging

• blogger.com
• wordpress.com
• custom

Performance Riding Class

The performance riding class starts at 11:00. Taught by Professor Hansen and his council of advisors, this class will focus and maximizing your riding performance. Professor Hansen will cover what you can do to get the best performance by YOU and your ride. Should be a very informative class on how to develop a great riding strategy to help you achieve a top performance.

4 to 12.5 mph

• Enjoy the ride
• Want to do it again
• Comfort
• Seeing new things
• Lightening the engine
  • Losing Weight
  • Calories in
  • Heart Rate Monitor
• Finish century in 8 hours
  • Learning to eat
  • Learning to drink
  • Gels, Endurolytes, Salt
  • Embrace the turtle

12 to 16.6 mph

• Injuries
• Don’t ride slow (uphill)
• Fitting the bike (trike)
• Getting your bent legs
• Learning to spin
• Pacing
• Reducing time off bike
• On bike stretching
• At 15+ mph -10 lbs equals +1 mph
• 15+ mph usually means new bike
• Finish century in 6 hours
  • While also enjoying it

17+ mph

• Dedication
  • Lots of hard work
• Aerodynamics
• Weight (engine and bike)
• Don’t ride slow (ever)
• Intervals
• Riding at 30+ mph
• Finish century under 6 hours
  • Eating during hard exercise
  • Drinking during hard exercise

Put the fairing back on. BOOM! Now the bike is 5 mph faster.

A couple of days ago I put the deep-v carbon clincher rim on the back wheel:

And today’s ride was beautiful:

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/432586713

http://app.strava.com/activities/107558952

The Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season combined with getting the flu twice really put the hurt on my ability to get some good rides in.

Looks like things might be getting back to normal soon.

A few days ago I took the fairing off the F-40 and performed spring tune up on the bike. I’ve left the fairing off for a couple of days while I shake out any tune up bugs.

Good ride today to Salado. Met up with Brian Buckmaster on his ICE Vortex trike and rode with him round trip.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/431168401

http://app.strava.com/activities/106838089

Although my legs are sore from yesterday’s ride I decided to do an old route I used to do a lot on my Musashi.

My fastest ever speed on the Musashi with fresh legs was 20.0 mph. Today with tired legs on the F-40 I was able to do a medium effort 21.2 mph.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/394851854

Felt pretty good today so I decided to push it some - two strava KOMS.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/394514037

http://www.strava.com/activities/90853621/overview