[trailrunner]

I’ve encountered booby traps while running on the Occoquan-Bull Run trail, and there have been booby traps on the trails at Wakefield (I think they finally caught the person behind those).

There are some sick people in the world.

[trailrunner]

Laurel Hills on the ‘cross bike.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]9529[/ATTACH]

[trailrunner]

At my previous job (which I left a while ago), I was a lunch time rider. I would make up for the extended lunch by coming in early in the morning, but I’m naturally a morning person anyway. I brought my bike in the morning in the back of my pickup truck, or in the back of my car. I could ride ~20 miles in about an hour, and with the prep time before and shower time afterward, I’d be away from my desk for about 1h30m, or maybe a bit longer.

One thing that helped was picking good routes that were appropriate for mid-day. We had some dedicated riders where I worked and we put together some 20 mile routes and shared them among ourselves. We would use multi-use trails, or residential streets that were quiet during the day. One of my co-workers came up with a killer hill route through the neighborhoods of Lake Barcroft that I probably rode a hundred times.

[trailrunner]

I ride my cross bike a lot at Laurel Hills. The trails there are gravel and dirt single track, but are not technical enough to justify a full mountain bike (IMO), and flow pretty well on a cross bike.

[trailrunner]

I remember seeing these in the 90s as a cheap way to get suspension on a mountain bike. Actually, I don’t think I ever saw anybody I know actually riding with one of these, but I used to see them in the magazines.

The only thing this does is cushion the bumps to the hands and arms, but the arms can absorb the shock relatively easy just by flexing.

[trailrunner]

@bobco85 121968 wrote:

I like the automatic brake lights but think this idea could be taken farther. I would like some sort of rear light system similar to (I’m not 100% that this is a real technology or not, but I heard of its usage) when buses are stopped at a red light and a car is approaching too fast, a sensor on the bus causes the brake lights to flash brighter than normal to alert the driver to stop.

A bicycle would be equipped with a similar sensor that does the following:

• senses if an object (vehicle) is approaching from the rear (same lane and/or one lane on each side to help with curves and lane-changing drivers)
• if the vehicle is approaching at 10 mph or faster than the cyclist’s speed and is within 100 feet of the cyclist, the sensor activates special lights that display for 10 seconds
• the special lights flash/shine brighter than the cyclist’s normal lights to better alert the driver to the cyclist’s presence
• note: the speed, distance, and time duration of said device are just for example

This is getting close to what you want:

http://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/into-sports/cycling/varia-smart-bike-lights/prod506138.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lCQN8DaelY

[trailrunner]

I live a few miles from Accotink and have ridden there and at Wakefield for a long time. I’ve ridden both those places on my fully rigid mountain bike back in the early 90s, and I’ve ridden them more recently with my latest and greatest full suspension bike, and I’ve ridden them once in a while with my cross bike. A FS bike is not overkill for those trails, but they all can be ridden with a cross bike if that’s all you have and if you have enough skill. Given the choice, I prefer to take one of my suspension bikes.

[trailrunner]

When I used to race, it bothered me when I heard of other middle-age people cheating, even though I was several categories below those guys and even without doping, they could crush me. Yes, some were caught, even in the amateur ranks. Same thing when I was doing a lot of triathlons.

As far as us normal people with legitimate medical reasons to take things like asthma medicine or testosterone which would disqualify the user – that’s unfortunate, but those are the rules, even at the amateur level. Jonathan Vaughters had to drop out of the TdF one year after he got stung by a bee and seriously needed cortisone. There is a process to get a TUE if it’s that important.

Funny story: back in the mid-90s when I was racing mountain bikes a lot, and before doping was big news, I was at a race somewhere in western MD (Flintstone maybe?). I was in the parking lot getting ready, and I smelled something funny coming from the car next to me. When I looked over, two guys were in the car ingesting something. One of the guys, sounding just like Spicoli, offered me some with the promise that it would help me race better. I declined.

[trailrunner]

@dbb 120485 wrote:

Except in the US we would have had the University of South Florida or UC San Diego do the research!

Hey – I went to UCSD, and just so you know, we sometimes had bad weather. For sure, I remember the terrible winter of ’80’ and the night it got below 45F. We all thought the world was coming to an end. It was so bad that I actually had to wear a sweater!

[trailrunner]

@Boo Boo 120233 wrote:

I’ve done that ride going this way. It’s a pretty good haul – ~27 miles – but pretty decent in terms of available trails/sidepaths/bike lanes.

123, cutting over to FFX County Parkway Trail at Burke Lake
Right on Hooes
Left on Newington Forest
Right on South Run Valley Trail shortly after Summer Breeze Lane (Note: You can turn onto the trail earlier, but then have to deal with two stream crossings)
Left at 2nd Folk in Trail, follow to Magic Leaf Road
Right on Magic Leaf
Right on Pohick, follow across 95
Left on Whernside Street
Left on Telegraph
Left on Beulah
Right on Manchester
Left on Kingstown Village Pkwy
Left on Van Dorn
Right on Castlewellan, road changes name to Ballycastle, follow to bike path (on right)
Bike Path to Celtic Drive
Left on Rose Hill, follow across Franconia, road becomes Bush Hill Drive (slightly to left at light at Franconia)
Right on Ninian
Left on Jane
Right on Larno
Left on Upland
Left on Clermont, follow to dead end and go down Z-trail
Cross under 495
Right on Eisenhower

If you make it to the FFX parkway trail, instead of doing the section in red, I’d recommend staying on the path as it transitions to the Franconia-Springfield Parkway trail. You have to cross the parkway at Stream Way, and then again at Bonnie Mill, and then continuing east you can cross 495 on a pedestrian bridge at Backlick (I do this twice a day on my commute). Once on the east side of 495, go north on Loisdale briefly, then bear right to the path to the Franconia-Springfield metro, then continue east on the path to Manchester Lakes and join Boo Boo’s route.

[trailrunner]

A couple of minor suggested alternates to bobco85’s great route:

From Guinea Road, I might suggest turning R on Olley Lane, L on Lake Braddock Drive, x Burke Lake Road tro Lake Braddock Drive. When you get to Rolling Road, you can either cross Rolling Road and go straight on Southampton Drive to join bobco’s route (although I would exit the Lake Accotink trail at Ellet Road), or cross Rolling Road and take a quick R, then a L onto the Lake Accotink trail (north of the RR tracks, on the opposite side of Morrissette Drive), and go around the southern part of the lake and exit the park on Heming Avenue and continue on his route on Leesville Boulevard.

One way to avoid the Backlick – Edsall corner is when Leesville ends, turn R on Backlick, then L on Industrial Road, and take this around to Edsall just west of 395. When I worked at the Mark Center, I used to commute this way and I liked it. There are a few trucks on Industrial Road, but they usually treated me fair, and I preferred it over the car traffic.

One way to avoid the Edsall Road overpass over 495 is from Edsall (or Industrial) take Cherokee -> R on Chowan -> R on boundary road just south of Little River Turnpike, x LRT at North Beauregard Street and stay on this road until a R on the Holmes Run trail, which you can take across 395 and link up with Cameron Run. This also used to be part of my commuting route. Cherokee and Chowan have a few hills, but they are relatively quiet, and I enjoyed riding these streets.

Depending on exactly where you’re starting from, you might also be able to put together a more northern route. There is a pedestrian bridge over 495 at Wakefield park (on the west) and Americana Drive (on the east). You could work your way through the neighborhoods and cross 395 at Homes Run or Sanger Avenue (also near North Beauregard Street), and from there it’s easy to get to the path on Cameron Run and then Eisenhower Avenue.

[trailrunner]

@KLizotte 119998 wrote:

I’d be really careful if you don’t know what you are doing. I once tried to tighten the cable myself on the rear derailleur and overtightened it. When I went to ride it the cable snapped! Ouch.

You broke the cable? I’m having trouble envisioning a scenario where that could happen. The only thing I can think of is that you had the DR against the limit screw, and forced a shift so hard that you broke the cable; even in that scenario, I would think that you would break the shifter or pull the cable from the clamping bolt long before you snapped a cable. Unless the cable was old and rusted, that would take a lot of force to snap a cable.

Or maybe I need to visit the gym more often? 😮

[trailrunner]

@KLizotte 119968 wrote:

I have recently found that soaking my bottles and caps in water with an Efferedent tablet to be a great way to sanitize and clean them. Yes, denture cleaning tablets. They do a good job at getting sports drinks residue out as well. I just let the bottles soak overnight and rinse out. Easy peasy. 😮

That’s how we used to clean our Camelbacks, back in the day before they sold their own cleaning tablets and cleaning kits.

[trailrunner]

My current round-trip bike commute is 23 miles. I’ve been bike commuting over ten years now, but it’s rare that I commute all five days in a week. Sometimes it’s because of logistics, such as an off-site meeting I have to get to, sometimes I need to run an errand after work, and sometimes I just want to run instead of ride. And sometimes I get lazy and don’t feel like it. I don’t have any guilt over it.

As far as Strava goes – about the time I started to bike commute regularly was when I was slowing down on the bike races and triathlons. I told myself that commuting was going to be easy riding and not hard training. And most of the time I’m riding my 25 year old mountain bike weighted down with panniers, which is definitely not a go-fast setup and makes me care even less about trying to go fast. Every now and then I get lucky with a strong tailwind and I’ll get on the leaderboard for a Strava segment, but that’s pretty rare, and certainly doesn’t motivate me much.

[trailrunner]

I’ve biked and run around Acadia. As CaseyKane noted, the carriage trails are great for family biking. Here’s a map of the network of trails:

http://www.nps.gov/acad/planyourvisit/upload/CRUMmap.pdf

For more challenging road rides, you can do various combinations of the park loop road and route 3, and then climb Cadillac Mountain for a good workout and a nice view.

Jordan Pond is a nice place to visit. I think it’s about a four mile hike around the lake. Echo Lake has a small beach and was a good place to spend an afternoon. On one of my trips there, we took a small boat tour from Southwest Harbor to one of the Cranberry Islands (I forget which one), which was neat.

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