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The long ride home from work

March 26, 2009 // Posted in Cycling  |  No Comments

Today I rode home from work with my buddy Clay. The ride is not a short one. Today, my ride was 40.21 miles long, putting me at 281.2 miles for the year, leaving 2218.8 miles to go (88.75% remaining to my goal). Instead of pressing ‘lap’ on my GPS, I pressed ‘Start/Stop’, so my data is missing 4 miles, a total time, and an accurate total calories. At 36.21 miles (what my GPS ‘total’ mileage reads), I burned 2758 calories, or 76 calories per mile. By extrapolation, I can say that I burned 3062 calories total, including the miles not recorded on the GPS.

Another annoyance on the trip was that the speedometer attached to my bike kept fritzing out. That was the worst part of the day. Other than that, it was a nice day riding. My wife says that my face got too much sun, but it felt more like windburn to me.

My goal is to be able to ride home at an 18 mph average, instead of the 16.4 I have been averaging. Well, there’s always next time.

Also, my core is STILL sore from the tabata burpees earlier this week. The fallout from that has been an experience. I will continue these for six weeks before deciding on how useful they are to me.

30.65 miles, in the rain: Personal Avg Speed PR for the trail!

March 22, 2009 // Posted in Cycling, Fitness (Tags: , ) |  No Comments

Well, it wasn’t raining when I started, but about the midpoint of today’s out and back ride, the rain decided it was time. Everything got wet. But the worst, I think, were my feet. I was wearing (stupid) cotton socks and they took the opportunity to quickly saturate. What made it better was the water they chose to soak in was grime occluded junk my tires decided to pick up off of the tarmac. Wonderful.

All that said, it was a great day. My out speed average was a respectable (for this trail, with its sharp turns and random street crossings, not to mention the plethora of idlers) 17.6 mph. Not bad at all, as my previous best time was 17.7. However, my in speed (it’s an out an back style ride) was a whopping 18.9 mph, a full 1.2mph faster than my previous best. This put my average speed for the entire ride at 18.2 mph, with a max of 36.4 (WHEEEEEE). and a total of 2521 calories burned. My max HR was 192, and average was 159. My GPS doesn’t record cadence, but I tried to keep it around 75 or so - that’s where I felt the best and most productive. My total riding time was 1:40:55.21 for 30.65 miles. All in all, a great day riding.

And the rain wasn’t even cold.

Tour de Cure: Team Cyclenetic

March 22, 2009 // Posted in Cycling (Tags: , , , , , ) |  No Comments

Its a killer

It's a killer

Please feel free to donate and help me reach my goal of (at least) $150 which will go to support diabetes research. I will be riding 100 miles the day after having ridden about 70 miles (for ride your bike to work day). Sound like fun? Yeah, to me, too.

Help would be greatly appreciated, both by me and by diabetes researchers and sufferers everywhere. Donate here.