It's August! Riding through the heat.

[north woods gal]

Good for him, Emily. You and I both know what a big step it is to ride, again, after an accident. 28 miles for me, right now, though, would be a very long ride. Impressive, especially with that Florida heat.

Been averaging between 10 and 15 miles a day, now, with a mix of trail and pavement riding, but mostly pavement. My neck is doing okay, but long rides of over an hour tend to make it a bit sore, so gradually working my way into longer rides. It's not just my neck, really, it's also my shoulder area muscles around the base of my neck that need to build back up.

Been getting to know my single speed Log Lady a bit better. Really enjoying it for these hour long rides. Have tuned it to put me in a good upright position for pedaling out on the road and have gone with XC MTB racing tires with very low rolling resistance to make it easy to pedal. It's also geared low for trail work, though I'm not using it on the trails, now. Just using it as a hilly country pavement/gravel road bike. (Not going to use any bike, now, with less than 3" wide tires for trail riding, as per my resolution.) Without going all techno geeky about gearing and gear inches, I'll just tell you that when pedaling on flat and level pavement, the Log Lady maintains a measly 10 mph before I start to overspin. Definitely not a bike to pigeon the road miles. That's okay, though, because when I start to climb, I forgive it. The 27.5" tires and low gearing makes this little single speed climb like a monkey. It's a hoot! It's also a great bike for casual outings or just noodling around the neighborhood. (By contrast, my 29er Gunnar single speed is geared to maintain a very useable 13 mph on the flats, but, of course, I have to do a LOT more standing to pedal up our hills.)

As for my trail riding, I've discovered that dropping the tire pressure low on the fat bikes to my normal snow riding pressures makes them just comfortable enough for my neck to manage some trail riding if I stay on the smooth sections. I normally run the tire pressures up for summer riding to gain speed and agility, but I'm not concerned with those things, right now. Just being able to ride trails at all, even for a short ride, is progress.