Recently I wanted to enforce the hostname in a couple Django-based projects. By default, Django really only allows you to enforce that a "www" is present in the URL. To me this seems rather one-sided as several sites may need:
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To enforce that the "www" is not present
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Or that an alternate domain name resolves to the primary domain
So I created the following middleware to enforce hostnames and submitted it to be added to the core (which was rejected). But in case you need to enforce the domain that visitors to your projects use, you may find this to be handy!
Following my January training log, here's what went down in February:
Training:rest ratio: 4:7
Cross bike: 1 day
Road bike: 5 days -- 235.5 miles
MTB (trail): 5 days (1 day) -- 73.8 miles
Running: 1 day
Indoor trainer: 2 days
Strength training: 3 days
Days training in Forest Park: 5
I’ve been on long bike rides where I just hit the “wall”, scrape my way home, just hoping my legs can keep turning the cranks. There have been bike races where I could not even stand on the pedals for about an hour because of searing knee pain or it’s taken everything to not collapse right after the finish line. This weekend entered a new demented feeling: that feeling of “if this was flat, I could totally keep riding, but this is not flat”.
See, the boys over at Team Seagal put on a killer road ride, titled “Death By Hills”. I propose that next year the name become, “Death by Evil, Leg Breaking, I should have brought rock climbing gear hills”. But that might be too long. Next year I may need to look into compact gears!
The ride opens with Bartizan Drive. Only about 230 feet of climbing? Easy! Except the road bends to an insane 20+% grade. I put a foot down on this beast. Next on the hit list was some roads off Old State, which seems innocent for awhile until suddenly you’re grinding out at least a 13% grade. Followed by Alt Road, the “Allenton” loop (Hunters Ford Rd), and Allenton Road. By the time I left Allenton, most of the lead group had finished the Scenic Loop (and the Wall), so I “missed” that. Several times over, we were reaching 13% and higher.
Things were getting weird. The truly steep stuff wasn’t approachable for me any more — I couldn’t really stand anymore and sitting in the granny gear felt like pushing a big gear up smaller grades. Hill climbing is a whole body workout. I can feel soreness in my arms almost as much as my legs. I unknowning rode Wild Horse Creek in the big chainring (at that point I just assumed I was in the small chainring!), but that was the last of truly climbing for me. As the group headed to Babler State Park to climb the Beast and then Doberman, I called it a day. Heading down Wild Horse Creek to Baxter, I could still feel some power/fitness on flats, but the hills down Clarkson brought things back into reality. Training has allowed me to feel fine with cardio demands of a 5 hour ride (at my pace), but the legs can’t quite hold up to demands of a ride like this. Next year, I’ll tackle the entire thing!
This season I began really working on hills and finally conquered the first hill that had always beat me in the past (Doberman). Looks like I need to spend some more time in hill country this summer!
Some resources for hills in St. Louis and a few hills not mentioned there:
- St. Louis cycling hills
- The climb up Wild Horse Creek from the intersection with Ossenfort is also a nice climb. Not necessarily steep (except at the beginning), but a nice effort.
- Woodland Meadows offers another worthy kick in the rear
- I will definitely return to the Melrose/Highway T/Bassett/Old Manchester/Bouquet loop
- I have a score to settle with the hill’s near Old State
- I balked at the sight of Cremin’s Road (off Bassett)
January was the first month I've ever really kept track of which days were rest days and which days I did really any "training". Looks like:
Training:rest ratio: 12:31
Cross bike: 5 days
Road bike: 3 days -- 141.2 miles
MTB: 2 days -- 49.7 miles
Running: 1 day
Indoor trainer: 1 day
Days training in Forest Park: 6
Winter training in Missouri has proven interesting. This is the first year that I've really strived to train all winter or at least come semblance of training and I think I've had some reasonable success.
Take a night last week. Training seemed similar to previous nights: cold, but above freezing temps and an impending winter storm that was forecast to drop 3 to 4 inches of snow. I opted to take the road bike out for my 1.5 hour loop. Starting up Clayton road (heading west) I started to catch some snow flurries. This has become old hat to me. I like riding in falling snow. But I guess the storm temps were warming up: the snow changed into freezing rain and eventually into a nice cold rain. For the record: freezing rain at road bike speeds is not fun. At all. I cut the loop short by about 10 miles, and while on the home stretch, I could feel water pooling in my shoes. Stopping at lights made this worse. I spent the last five miles looking over my glasses so I could see the road, hoping the passing cars would take pity on me, a reflective humanoid out doing a rather stupid bike ride. Looking back on this session, I love that I can't really tell you how effective the training was because I was concentrating on seeing the road and staying warm! (Not to mention my heart rate monitor "freaked", reporting a max heart rate of 218)
Based on how many total miles I've put on my road bike since around when I purchased it, I place a little over 200 miles a month on it. Obviously in the past that would be significantly skewed for spring, summer, and fall when I probably place the majority of those miles. This January I only managed about 140 miles on the road bike and 50 on the mountain bike. This doesn't include cross bike time (no computer) and bike "miles" while on a trainer, but still doesn't amount to much. Four out of the last seven days have been rest days!
I've ridden in sub-30 degree (Fahrenheit) temps, in rain and snow, both in day and at night. I've ridden the mountain bike on frozen trails, snow covered trails, bit it on ice once or twice. Spent at least one night doing a circuit or two of practice cross course. Scared runners in Forest Park with my trail riding light (not on purpose of course!).
In the end, will this help me meet my racing goals for the year? I think so. Last spring, when the first race rolled around I was most notably not in shape. I think I had hit trail maybe three times in the month leading to that race. This year, I can at least feel like staying on the bike for two hours won't be the end of me, but I still have a lot of work to do if I'm going to stick with those cat 2/sport racers!
Twitter (2010-03-10)