Despite taking my bike in for a tune-up two and a half weeks ago, the combination of weather and after-work commitments since then put off riding it to work until today.
It turns out, I'm a little rusty. The bike isn't; even in jeans, a coat (it's 6°C on May 4th!), and a backpack containing shoes (my Felt 65 has cleat-only pedals), I still managed to barrel down Wells St. at 30 km/h. Bottom line, I got to work in 26 minutes, including the 4 minutes or so to get the bike out of its locker. In other words, I cut my commute in half, and burned a few extra calories along the way.
It's supposed to rain the next couple of days, but Saturday the forecast calls for biking weather. More details to follow.
I finally took my bike to a shop for a cleaning and tune-up. I haven't ridden in a while, mainly because of my knees, but I miss it. My doctor recommended taking some ibuprofen an hour before riding as he believes it's simply age-related arthritis. I hope he's right. Even if he isn't, I estimate the ride from my house to work will take about 20 minutes (cf. 45 by bus or train), which isn't even long enough to work up a sweat.
I'm not planning to ride the North Shore Century this year, though. Let's take it slow. If I'm up to 50 km without pain by mid-July, I'll reconsider.
Yesterday I posted about a bike that hadn't been ridden in a while. This morning the bike had gone:
Someone appears to have slacked off from his exercise program:
I think winds affect my biking regardless of what direction they're coming from. This morning, for example, in calm winds, I set three personal records on a 60 km ride: best distance over 1 hour (30.9 km); best time for 40 km (1:18:14, beating my previous PR by 4:01); and best time for 60 km (1:58:28, beating my previous by 3:22).
Next week I'm planning to ride 110—120 km as part of my North Shore Century training. Maybe another PR or two?
Phooey. My ride Saturday seems to have caused some irritation in either the ligaments or cartilege of my left knee. Not crippling, but kind of painful. So no biking this weekend, and I'll have to postpone my planned 80 km ride to the following weekend.
Last year, I couldn't ride the two centuries I'd trained for because of my gallbladder. If I'm out because of my knee this year, I'll be really, really disappointed. And I can't even blame Tonya Harding.
Biking yesterday I hit a new PR for spot speed: 54.0 km/h, beating the old record of 53.4 km/h I set last August 26th. Whee!
Apparently there will be a series of bike races just outside my office window on July 22.
Even though I'm not riding my bike as much as I should (though this is about to change), I've finally got off my butt and put my Google Earth tracks from 2006 and this year.
I finally got around to updating my biking stats (but not the Google Earth tracks—Garmin changed their XML format and I haven't written a converter yet). I discovered, to my surprise, that I got a new personal record on May 27th: 40 km in 1:22:15, which is an average speed of 29.2 km/h. This bested my previous record by 23 seconds. Cool.
Also, today's ride took me up to Cicada Central. Wow. I only had two collisions (and only one cicada fatality), but the sound was worth the trip.
On the other hand, the abysmal heat (33°C) was not.