riding into the heat of july

[Crankin]

Ha, ha, Sue. I am generally not a slave to numbers. I stopped weaing my HR monitor years ago, and while I do look at my stats after a ride, I don't upload them anywhere, except for writing in an old fashioned training log. Since I don't focus on average speed like I used to, most of my "numbers" focus goes to miles ridden in a year. But, any time I start doing more of another sport, it takes away from this. This year it's hiking. A few times, it was running. In the end, I always go back to cycling more. I can handle the gym 2X a week with the amount of riding I do, but not much more. I just am in awe of those who can do the 2x a day workouts on a regular basis. Yeah, I can go to the gym and commute to work, or take a shorter, slower ride, but not much else.

[north woods gal]

Being the largely internally motivated best I am, yeah, I can also get too hung up on the numbers. I still keep a log of miles ridden, every day and an ongoing monthly tally, but my miles are down quite a bit, this month, because of my mountain bike riding. Miles accumulated in that kind of riding, especially working technical single track, have little in common with miles accumulated via pavement riding on the road bike, so not sure why I bother. I suppose it might be more meaningful to use hours biked when comparing the two types of riding, but even that is iffy. I can promise you this: one hour of work on some of my local single track leaves me huffing and puffing and shaking like no hour of road biking ever has.

On the plus side, though, much to be said for mountain biking back in the deep woods on these hot days. Always shaded and cool, but once back out in the open on the pavement to get back home, the sun can be murder.