May 6 ride

Today was very windy here in Rhode Island. 15 mph winds with gusts. I was only going to ride for an hour or so but then the endorphins kick in and I don't want to go home. Rode for 39.4 miles. Luckily, the wind was at my back for a long stretch. Nothing like breezing along at 20 mph with the wind at my back and no wind in my ears, just quiet. The last 5 miles were into the wind. At that point I was ready to get home. My thighs were complaining when I got home. I've got to toughen up my sit bones for my first Century coming up in June. Hope it's not so windy!!

I joined the club on their MS 150 prep ride (40 miles). It was a challenging route with lots of hills and a headwind (10 mph+) the first 25 miles or so. I guess my hard ride yesterday took more out of my legs then I had anticipated for I really struggled the first 20 miles or so. I quickly conclued that tired legs and headwind make for a demoralizing combination. However, once I left the SAG and got out of the wind I found a nice rhythm and really picked my pace up to a nice, comfortable level. In the end I rode 38.5 miles and averaged 15.7 so I'm a happy camper. Now that the ride is over, the lawn is mowed I do believe it is time for a nap.

We started out to do a ride that we thought would be 35 miles. Since we started from a slightly different spot, we weren't sure. This ride has a steep climb near the end; the rest is rolling. Well, we ended up doing 30 miles and didn't do the climb part.
The weather was one of the strangest factors in how all 4 of us felt. It was 53 when we left, with a steady wind of about 15 from the NE (cold direction). It was partly cloudy, but supposed to clear up. I was wearing a base layer, light weight smart wool jersey and a wind jacket. i started out with my fleece head cover and long gloves. Oh, and i had my booties on, with thin wool socks. After 6 miles, we stopped at a gas station and I took off my base layer. About 3 miles after that, I took off the head cover and switched to regular gloves, unzipped the jacket. Then, we stopped to eat at mile 15. The sun went away and the wind picked up. When we headed out, I put the long gloves back on and put on a thin skull cap. I had taken the booties off at lunch. My feet were cold for awhile, but some good rollers heated me up. After about 10 miles more, i put the regular gloves back on... you get the picture. At this point we were about to turn onto Lost Lake Rd., which is the climb. All of us had various physical aches and pains, so we rode on a parallel street that I had discovered in the car a couple of weeks ago. It's lots of rollers and fun, but then you have to travel on a busy road with hardly any shoulder for about 4 miles , instead of just crossing it. I didn't mind (I realized how used I am to riding on busy streets), but my friend did.
So now the sun is fully out,it's in the 60s, and it's gorgeous. I have work to do...
Taking tomorrow off and hope to commute to work on Tuesday and Thursday.

Rode one of my "daily ride" routes today...although "daily" is not quite the truth...I've hardly ridden at all in the last week! It's an 18 mile loop with some big long hills. An absolutely beautiful day...in the mid-60's, not a cloud in the sky, and moderate winds. Spring is in full force here...it's so green and lush and gorgeous! I get to ride through forest areas, our little "downtown" which is about 1/8 mile from start to finish, as well as agricultural areas with apple orchards and Christmas tree farms. Beautiful views of the snowy mountains too!

Aside from a terrifying stretch where I was passed by about 40 motorcycles, it was a great ride. Two things that really got me riled up about this group of motorcycles...#1 they were riding in pairs so they were taking up the entire lane, and #2 some of them felt the need to honk and yell and scream at me. This stretch of road was uphill with no shoulder and a 3' deep ditch directly off the white line. Clearly, the motorcyclists saw me there...unless they normally ride around honking and screaming. Of course, they had no idea that I was super tired, I basically cannot ride in a straight line, and that riding 4 inches from a ditch while wondering just how many more motorcycles were back there was scaring the living daylights out of me. At any rate, when they FINALLY finished passing me, I was shaking from the terror of it and had to stop in a driveway, sit down in the dirt, and drink my Gatorade until my heart rate and breathing got back under control.

The last stretch of my ride is a really fun little country road...downhill with big sweeping curves. I can basically ride down the middle of the road and get up to about 30 mph. It's like a treat to look forward to as I near the end of my ride.

And...I did not fall over today! I love my clipless pedals once I'm riding, but I was about ready to put my platform pedals back on. I'm banging up my bike and my body with my crazy tip-overs. I haven't this many bruises on my legs since I was a little kid! I still need to learn how to start and stop properly, but at least I stayed upright today.

I rode with a new club group today. They have a casual ride in my area about 3 x a month. It was great!, lots of fun! Plus, a girlfriend of mine came too and had a wonderful time. The "slow" group leader was a woman who seemed about 65 and so nice- she always stopped to wait up for my friend and me. :eek: :rolleyes: :cool: We felt very welcome and we fit right in I thought. Such a nice group of friendly people. :) :)
Had ice cream afterwards. A wonderful sunny cool 24 miles (a welcome relief after yesterdays' LONG ride for me).

I had planned to go to Annapolis and do the annual 4.5 mile walk across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge (once a year they close the bridge and let people walk across it), but the walk was canceled due to high winds (>30mph). So instead I met my friends at Lake Artemesia in College Park and did a 3 mile walk there, then went out for breakfast.

I was a slug for several hours, but I felt guilty so I took the new commuter bike, Miss Gulch, out for a ride to check out the new Brooks B68 saddle. I ended up back at Lake Artemesia, a 20 mile roundtrip ride. Very nice, cool, windy ride. And the saddle felt great.

Only 9.5 hilly miles for me today. Had to listen to my body - apparently I need a break after several long days of riding...
Trish

Did my first dedicated "cyclo-geocache" ride today. This weekend was forecast to be sunny and warm. It was neither. Decided to go out anyway today and nab some caches by bike. Glad I did! Found some wonderful new trails --and despite the rain-- had a great afternoon. Thirty-two off-road kilometers on "Vee", and two cache finds as well.

OK, it's official, I suck at any training regimen. I skipped a planned 55 mile ALC training ride when I checked the fine print and it was CAT3, the description went on at length that they would set a fast pace. The hilly route is one I know well, I'm a slow but steady rider, decided not to hold them back.

But I told myself "self, you have to do something as hard." So instead of my light fast zippy road bike I took the MTB to Alameda Creek Trail.

Wouldn'tcha know that it was hot, and from start to 24 mile finish I had headwinds. It was almost as if they followed me "look, we'll show her. Betcha wish you were on Old Tunnel Road trying to catch CAT 3 riders now, huh?"

I love that trail but on one stretch was reminded why I prefer to be there when the weather is bad. Nice weather brings out &*^% riders. One group of four, no helmets, wearing brown business suits :confused: sprawled 4 up across the path as they headed towards me.

:D I waved and smiled ... no reaction
:rolleyes: rang the bell ... no response
:o did the international sign of pointing to the left ... no reaction
:( yelled "stay on your right" ... no reaction
:mad: then just stood up in the pedals and full out sprinted right at 'em

brown suit guys expression looked like this :eek:

After the ride I went to Mission Coffee Roasters and met up with a couple of friends who live nearby.

Went and did my standard loop... the portola valley loop from home, 25 miles. NIce day, warm and kind of windy, but I had fun playing with my new toy...picked up a Garmin Forerunner 305. :D Got home and downloaded my route and wasted too much time looking at my heart rate, elevation, pace etc. Such a fun toy! Here is the route I did: http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/2662863

PABadger - that's a really cool toy!! Thanks for the addy to see what you did today.. way cool...


I had a good training ride today... 44 miles of wind (17-22 s, sw) and some pretty good hills. Came home and mowed the lawn... Doggone, i'm pooped!!!
Oh yeah...and had to give one of my cockers a bath. No more dirty dog! :P

Was carless today, so I decided to ride to the starting point of a club ride which was advertised as a "classic"/heavy/unusual bike ride around town from the library down to the waterfront and back. Ten miles down and ten miles to back to join a 12 mile ride! I don't have a classic bike, so I rode my hybrid, thinking there would be simply loads of old heavy clunkers at the ride. Turned out there were a lot of beautifully maintained classic racing bikes. I almost turned around and went back home! But I did manage to keep up-- even on the hills-- and made it over the scairyiest bridge I've ever seen without getting off and walking. It would have been scairy either way, but it was faster just to stay on the bike. One of the beautiful racing bikes was ruined, unfortunately, and the rider thrown over her handle bars when her front tire got wedged in between the boards as we rode around the marina. So tragic! The woman landed on her face, but arose worrying that her front wheel (which was irreplacable) was permanently damaged. Such dedication; I would have been worried that my face was permanently damaged--but then I'm a wuss...
I was so pleased with myself for managing to keep up with the speedy people. At one point I noticed that we were going 18-20 mph (on a flat stretch). This time last year, I was lucky to reach 10-12 mph on that hybrid. I was pretty darned wiped out when I got home, though.

with committee meetings, i didn't get on the bike until 5PM. I managed to get about 27 miles in.
Like most of you I had a good headwind (going out). But then we usually have a string wind coming in from the ocean late spring / summer afternoons. I used to my advantage coming back. The only lowlight was that my HR monitor froze up :(

DH and I went 50 miles - we went down the bike trail to A Hill (demon hill that defies us to tell it that it's easy), then back to a park then to the Velodrome to watch a new class learn to ride!

It was supposed to be warm but it turned out being chilly then humid then really quite windy! I did this same route last week and it was a bit painful but I guess I got stronger because today I was moderately perky! That's a good thing :D

It was a great ride really though the stroller pushers and pedestrians tended to be on the oblivious side. DH is much more polite than I am, I'm the type to remind them that "on your left" means get OVER!!!

It was really windy this a.m. but I got out there and did 18+ miles anyway. Loved the tail wind on the way home. Got up to 30+MPH using that tail wind.
After work did 30 minutes on the eliptical trainer. Since I have been riding the bike I have noticed a huge difference in my endurance while doing other forms of exercise.

It's been a great riding week for me! 200 km in the last 8 days. Today we did 20km of our favourite hilly ride using my new Garmin Edge 305! Whoo hoo, what fun! Downside is I have to use DH's computer to run the software that came with it, until I upgrade the system software on my Mac that is...

I sent a message to my women's team to see if anyone wanted to go out and do a long, hard training ride yesterday - only had 1 taker!

In our area, we are pretty lucky to have a series of very well marked bike loops. One of the local clubs provides cue sheets for various rides, and some of those are made easier to follow with markings painted on the road to indicate the loop and any turns. My teammate and I set off on what is called the Apple Pi loop - 55 miles.

As Robyn mentioned, the wind was blowing pretty good here in New England, and the temps were in the lower 50s. I was under-dressed, and cold for most of the ride, despite some of the hill climbs in the apple country. Rolling down Oak Hill at over 30 mph in that cold was not as much fun as normal... And somehow, even though we rode in a loop, we seemed to be riding INTO the wind for the entire 55 miles!

It was nice, though, riding past the apple orchards in bloom!

SheFly

Yesterday was the 5 boro bike tour in NYC. It is 42 miles of traffic-free cycling. I did the ride last year and loved it. Yesterday however my group was in the back of the pack of around 33,000 cyclists and ended up walking for significant portions of the ride (through central park, up the 59th street bridge). The thought of waiting with all of these people for the ferry in staten island was too much, so we bailed and biked back home via the west side cycle path. Around a 30 mile ride, but so slow and with so much walking in between I don't feel like I did my usual long weekend ride at all!

Today was my first ride (on this bike) of any real measurable distance.

I think I have finally found a shifter configuration that will work for me - I ended up with a bar-end friction shifter for the chain rings. the brakes and the cassette shifter stayed the same.
I ended up doing 9.5 easy miles.
Number of dead animals seen- 3, a deer, a oppossum, and a black snake.
Number of dead animals smelled - 1, a deer, no mistaking that smell.
Number of animals that might have been dead but might have just been starting to cross the road - 1, a box turtle. I should have stopped to check on that one.

I got up yesterday morning and took off on my bike towards the southeast part of my county. It was cloudy and a little chilly, only in the mid to upper 50s so I put on tights and arm warmers. I even ran into some light rain and saw some lightning that fortunately stayed in the distance. We've had so much rain that I took this picture of the Arkansas River. It normally has little to no water in it due to irrigation, but not this year.

After I took the picture, I got a call on my cell phone from work; they needed me to work severe weather...again. After stopping quickly for a bathroom break and a snack I headed back. Got home and rushed around to get cleaned up. Total of 54 miles, not too bad, but wanted to do a bit more.