Hi Gretchen!

Uh... training routine? What's that?

A few months ago, right when I was thinking I wanted to get more into road biking (as opposed to meandering around the bike paths on my clunky old hybrid), I was really fortunate to come across a notice for a progressive series of training rides put on by a local bike club, in preparation for a women-only metric century at the end of March. (here's the training group website if you're interested: http://cindy.polakoff.com/index.html ) Those rides are on Saturdays, and get longer and hillier as the weeks progress. There are a lot of women our age participating. You might want to check with your local bike clubs and shops, there might be similar types of groups you can join, it's really fun.

That's the most formal "training" I do. I also often ride for a few hours with my husband on Sundays, or we just go off on our own. I've also been going out two or three mornings per week for about an hour before I go to work (but I haven't done that for a couple of weeks since we're having out kitchen remodelled - but I hope to resume that soon).

Basically, I get out and ride whenever I can scrape together the time and have the energy. And, sometimes, even when I don't feel like it ... more often than not, when I grudgingly haul my butt out, after a few miles I'm really glad to be riding.

I have a cyclecomputer and keep track of my miles ridden, avg speed, that sort of thing at www.bikejournal.com just to get a feel for how I'm progressing.

What I'm hoping to do is get to a point where I can easily manage a reasonably long daily distance (say 60 miles, with hills and wind) so I can start doing some touring! Our vacation time is already pretty much spoken for this year (rats!), but Lee and I were talking last night about what kind of touring we'd like to do next year.

- Jo.