May 6 ride

[DrBadger]

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. 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

[BabyBlueNTulsa]

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

[lauraelmore1033]

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.

[Fredwina]

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

[teigyr]

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

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!!!

[pastrypam]

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.

[kelownagirl]

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...

[SheFly]

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

[lisa_b]

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!