Lake Spivey Water Temperature

Susan and I took the boat our for a little ride this afternoon.  The weather was awesome for a Saturday in mid-January.  At one point during the day the temperature on my car dashboard read 81-degrees.  The actual temperature was probably closer to 75-degrees.  Anyway, it was way too warm for January.  I decided to check the lake water temperature when we were out.  I was especially interested in the temperature of the lake because I need to start swimming soon for the Try Charleston 70.3 on April 20th.

Lake Spivey water temperature at 5PM on Saturday, January 12th, 2013

 As you can see, 53-degrees is way to freakin' cold to swim in the lake even with a full wetsuit.

Thanks for reading.

First MTB Ride is in the Books

My first mountain bike ride at Dauset Trails, or otherwise, went off without a hitch on Sunday, January 6th.  The plan was to meet some friends at the Jackson, Georgia Nature Center at noon.  I had ridden with them previously on the road with Southern Crescent Cycling.  Dauset Trails was just a 30 mile drive south on I-75 from my home near Jonesboro.  I got there about 30 minutes early.

The sign on I-75 south near my exit

You're there when you see this sign on Mt. Vernon Church Road

The entrance to the parking lot with teeny-tiny signs on the trees

Mark and Brenda Herrington were already there and had ridden about 40 minutes before I arrived.  After me, Jason Darcy and Trey Hair arrived along with two other riders I hadn't met before, John and Joey.  We'd run into Neil Blalock, and Brett and Donna Broughton later on the trail.

John, Brenda, and Joey waiting for other riders

Our group of 6 riders head toward the trails

Jason looks on as Alec gets ready to go

A beautiful view of the trees surrounding the trails

John and Mark look on as I try to position the GoPro to shoot behind me

As everyone was getting ready I setup the GoPro Hero3 camera on my helmet.  I took what I thought would be about 18 minutes of video but which actually turned out to be just 5 still images.  Poorly staged images at that!  That's a slight fail on camera setup and a big disappointment.  I had obviously somehow changed the setup from video mode to still picture mode.  I did get a few pictures with my trusty Nikon before we started our ride.

After some thought about using the GoPro and my failed/planned video recording I decided to do a little ciphering   At full HD on the GoPro which is 1920 x 1440 each image is about 7MB.  Forty-eight (48) frames-per-second (fps) of video would create a file size of approximately 336MB per second.  At that rate, one (1) 16GB memory card would fill up in about forty-seven (47) seconds.  That can't be right, either way I think I'll choose a lesser image resolution and a slower fps rate for my next attempt.  I was hoping to get about five (5) minutes of raw video to edit but it was not to be.

Update (1/13/13):  My ciphering was wrong I shot four video segments the following weekend.  With the camera settings still on the default 1920 x 1440 resolution.  Segment #1 file size was 1.37GB for a 6:33 length video.  Segment #2 was 3.66GB for 17:25 of video.  That seems to equate to about 218MB per minute when converted to MP4 format. The same file is about 2.33GB per minute in the .avi file formate as recorded.  I have no idea how that's possible.  My computer says the 17:25 long .avi file is 47.5GB.  I only had a 16GB microSD card.  The GoPro learning curve must be steep and treacherous.

Mark, John, Trey, Brenda, and Jason

Even though the ride was not well documented it went well from my perspective.  I had plenty of energy and power to muscle up the hills.  It was only when I had to navigate between trees and over roots and rocks that I felt concern.  I popped out of my pedals once to traverse the Rock Garden at Sandy Creek and used back brake and one foot to hop down a steep leaf covered decline.  Not bad overall I'd say!

Our course took us all over the trails.  I'm not familiar with the names of each section although I did remember the entrance to Indian Springs State park as we rode past.  The park was the venue for a Tri The Parks sprint triathlon I had done in 2012.

I have to say that my legs had not burned like they did on Sunday in quite a while.  Therefore, I'm optimistic that this type of interval training will improve my power and speed on the road bike.  I'm looking to improve my bike speed at Ironman Florida 2013 by around 20 minutes.  Mountain biking should help.

One last thing.  I have to ask myself, what was I thinking when I thought I'd be riding my MTB bike at night?  It's hard enough staying on the trail in full daylight I don't know what I'd do in almost total darkness.

One more thing.  My Bontrager RXL MTB shoes fix most excellently!  I put them on, cinched'em up, and didn't even notice that they were there until I took them off two hours later.

Thanks for reading.

Bike Storage and Stuff

I've got a Racor ceiling mounted rack for bikes in the garage - four (4) hoists in total.  One hoist has my grandson's bike on it for his visits and another has an extra set of wheels.  See my previous post on My Bike Rack.  Susan's bike (not shown) is currently leaning against a set of shelves in the garage just below the wakeboard at the bottom of the picture below.

A bike hoist in the garage

My road bike on the trainer in the bedroom

My bike gloves and Garmin 910XT on the end table in the bedroom

A bowl near the garage door full of sunglasses, Ironman ankle straps, charging cables, truck keys, and a headlight

A plastic box in my garage full of water bottle cages, tubes, tools, instruction booklets, and much more

My mountain bike in the garage leaning against a table full of bike stuff

With two (2) road bikes, a tri-bike, a mountain bike, a 20" kid's bike, extra wheels, and cold weather clothes, my house is full of bike stuff.  It's on the table as I walk in the door.  It's on the floor in my garage.  It's on the floor in my bedroom.  How can I organize all this stuff?  I haven't been able to park my truck inside the garage in months.  I'd love to organize all my stuff in a single unit with drawers for most small items - that is easy to transport.  Does such an item exist?  Maybe separate bins for each bike is the solution.

Where or how do you store your bikes and stuff?

Thanks for reading.

Before my first MTB Ride

I thought I'd post a few pictures of my mountain bike before I take it on its maiden voyage on Sunday.  In the 10 days or so since I got the bike I've only ridden it to the end of my driveway once and a second time took me a distant three houses passed my driveway.  Its been cold, with the daily high temperatures of around 50-degrees Fahrenheit since Christmas.  The low temperatures have been in the 30's.

It's also htken me several days to outfit my bike for the journey ahead.  I finally got my MTB shoes last week.  They're black Bontrager RXL shoes - wide.  I had to special order them, of course.

Sunday will be my first official MTB ride.  A trip to Dauset Trail for a noon ride is scheduled.  Some of Southern Crescent Cycling's best MTB'ers should be there too.  I'm sure that I'll be the guy in the back making all the noise as I change gears trying to decide which out of 30 gears available is the best.

I plan to bring the GoPro Hero3 camera the club purchased as a Christmas present to its members.  So, you can look forward to some cool mountain biking videos in the coming months.

Thanks for reading.