October 20 Weekend Rides

This seems to be my fall of short rides, but I will take it :) After some further tweaking of my cleats they are now acting properly, and I had an enjoyable hour's ride this afternoon in the cool air. This is the time of the year that I always have to re-learn how to dress for cooler weather but I am not complaining. The knee, however, is still complaining on the bike but rarely in my other activities...(I might have to look further into this if something doesn't change soon). There was a time when I would have been pis*ed off at myself for riding less than 30 miles at minimum, but something has changed. I am thankful to be able to ride and am far more relaxed about it all than two years ago. Guess I learned something from those lengthy injury recovery periods...

Regardless, I really enjoyed chasing colorful crunchy leaves on my Gunnar, and enjoying the beautiful sight of riding down roads lined with trees and fallen colorful leaves. Winter might be coming (sadly) but this is a beautiful time of the year! I didn't see near the number of deer that I am accustomed to this time of the year.

Hi Catrin...glad you got the chance to go ride today.

I went for a 25mile ride with a buddy today and even though its pretty cold I still can handle wearing shorts. As soon as I get going my body gets warm. I do make sure I wear enough clothing on my upper body. I am really enjoying my clipless pedals and shoes and I think training indoors has helped a lot with getting in and out of them. I havent had a single fall yet. I am planning a 40 mile ride tomorrow with a friend I know since last year but we havent had the chance to ride together. It all depends on the weather though...I hope she dont cancel at the last minute. I am trying to take advantage of every single ride I can get due to the fact that I stopped commuting because of the weather and other stuff.

I only did 15.5 this morning, but it started pouring and the wind picked up. We headed back to the place we parked to the car. We did see a bald eagle near the river and on the way back home we saw a herd of elk.

It was in the 70s today! Windy, though. We had our theatre tickets last night and since it was a short, one act play, we then went to our son's house, where he and a friend from HS were celebrating their 30th birthdays. I didn't get home until 12:20 AM! I had had coffee at dinner, so it took me awhile to fall asleep. I studied for 3 hours until at 1 PM, I realized I was still not dressed, so DH and I went out and started to do an easy ride. By the time we were done, it was just under 20 miles, at a pace I haven't seen in awhile.
Hope to do 40 tomorrow, so I can get to 2,450 and then be in sight of 2,500 miles. I've let go of my goal of 3K, but, maybe. Wishful thinking.
Edit: per usual, I ended up doing 22, not 40 today. But, the best kind of ride. Rode to the cafe at the Stow Airport, had a great lunch/brunch, and back. It's windy as heck, about 18-20 mph gusts, but we figured out we'd have the tailwind on the way back, so... a little bit of a struggle on the way there, as it's more uphill, too.
We had to wait while to get seated, but it was worth it. The owner even noticed my new, blonder hair color. I haven't been there in awhile, but, it's nice to be recognized. On the way out, we saw another couple leaving, she was wearing a skirt and tights on a cool looking Specialized townie kind of bike. I said hi, but they kind of just looked at us. Weird, as they were about my age.

Foxy's Fall Century with my husband on the tandem, ride time about 5:16...not bad for 3000 plus feet of climbing.

Today was the first time I rode with another road biker. We are both relatively new to road biking and were fairly well matched. We hit a really nice river trail that was formerly a rail line so long stretches of flat riding on a beautiful fall day with amazing colors. We did around 32 miles and I feel good about that. Oh and did I mention the winery at the trail head? It was great.

I rode the Best Buddies Challenge on Saturday. 50 miles and it was wonderful. Nice course, gorgeous weather. I only went down once and I took a ride official down with me, so there's that. :) Right on to the elbow suture scars. At least I'm consistent. But seriously, really a nice day of riding. I'd have gone out again today but I'm beyond exhausted. I was gone from 5AM until 9PM. I need a couple more days of sleep I think.

35 miles in 2:15 hrs with mean winds especially on the last 8 miles . I stopped a few times to catch my breath. I was miserable on the rolling hills and the last 5 miles because the wind seem to picked up + it was open field!! ...but I made it with pretty good time in my opinion considering the winds and I am happy I made it. Now I am aching everywhere but it worth it. I will try to do this same route next weekend...and add 5 more miles if its not crazy windy.

I woke up late, had to meet a friend for lunch as well as work this afternoon. I still squeezed a ride in. Around 9 fast miles. Well, the riding part was fast. I got out just as the church traffic hit, so the waiting at intersections took longer than usual--almost as long as rush hour on weekday rides!
Like Catrin, I always have issues this time of year, especially when the temperature can still hit the high 60s or low 70s. I definitely overdressed today!

Yesterday was my birthday and DH and I wanted to do a long ride for my birthday. I got my wish but learned a couple of lessons!

The weather was supposed to be beautiful. Up to 70 degrees. We headed about 35 miles out of the twin cities to do a "country" and hopefully "scenic" ride. We did 80 miles, made at least one wrong turn that took us on a lengthy detour, experienced heinous headwinds that always seemed to change with our direction JUST enough to never be at our backs, and tackled about 1500 feet of climbing, mostly lumped into two climbs that MapMyRide classifies as Cat 5.

The last 14 miles, which were easily the worst riding I've ever done, were on the most ripped up bumpy nasty stretch of highway ever, with traffic, and NO shoulder. NONE. Literally, black top was crumbling at the white line. Pot holes, cracks, I thought a tire would get caught and we'd go down, or that the bike wheels would be shaken and jammed out of true.

And the sun was setting, and we were riding straight into it.

Exhausting, nerve-wracking, dangerous. But we're alive, and mostly I'm feeling okay except for my left knee, which really got sick of pushing into the wind.

We laughed most of the way home. It was a good birthday. A suffer-fest we're not going to forget any time soon!

Did anyone ride the Hilly Hundred on the weekend? I did. It was awesome, gorgeous fall colors. Saturday I suffered a fair amount (it rained at points, it was in the 50s at most, with a little wind and very humid), yesterday was perfect. Today I am tired!

I had a century planned for Sunday, but cold symptoms started to appear Thursday night. Bad timing, as it might be the last definite chance for a century length ride before El Tour de Tucson. Not good!! But I just did everything I could think of- drank fruit smoothies, water, orange juice and tea all day Friday and Saturday, and went to bed at 8 pm Friday and Saturday. My head was congested and I just felt yucky Saturday but Sunday I decided things had improved enough to go for it.

It wasn't my happiest ride ever- the first hour I wasn't sure if i was being stupid, and the middle part of the ride my digestive system just didn't feel normal. We had about 12 miles pushing into a stiff headwind as well. In spite of it all, I made it 92 miles (skipped a little bit that would have added 5-10 miles). It helped that the last 30 were ever so slightly downhill and we being carried along by a strong tailwind. Some of my new "team" were going fast and did the whole hundred at more than 17 mph. I had great companionship from another gal who was right with me the whole way, and we averaged 15.6 for the time we were actually riding (not counting SAG stops and those two times when I just felt like I had to stop and regroup).

Surprisingly- my legs hardly noticed the long ride today (Monday)- I think I just didn't push myself that hard because my body was not at 100% otherwise.