Jeff's 1000 Days and A Weekly Wrap Up

I'm so happy to have like minded company here in blogland when it comes to spending on cycling! I do try to keep it in check a little, but also feel like there's no time like the present when it comes to fitness items that contribute to good health and happiness. If I'm being completely honest, I was pretty much tallying up the expenses to see if I could readily justify buying some more things from my cycling wish list, or Jeff's.

Speaking of Jeff, I've been tracking his mileage too, so some of you might be interested to know that in the same 1000 day period as I posted for me, Jeff rode 333 days, exactly 1/3! He rode 7,129.67 miles. He's spent the same as me…we have to keep it fair around here.

Today's ride was a tough one as we'd expected a summery day and instead had fog, wind and low 50's F for temps! In this pic Jeff pushes into the headwind as his jacket billows out even though it's so fitted.

And, a little further along, on the bridge, there wasn't much of a view. There were a lot of other cyclists out, probably expecting better weather too. In fact, there was a cyclist coming towards us in this picture, but you can only barely see his head and shoulders over the guardrail.

My knees are still bothering me, so I was especially glad I'd pulled on the tights at the last minute. My joints were even chilled through those, so I can imagine the torture bare knees would have been!

The sun actually did burn through the fog at the end of our ride, maybe tomorrow will be a bit nicer? I'm planning to bike the short loop followed by more yard work.

It was a light-ish week of riding, 5 days/101.10 miles. Weather and knees didn't really want to cooperate, but it's still plenty of riding for maintenance.

1000 Days

When you record stats like I do, little milestones periodically show up in the tables and charts. Today, I noticed one I quite like: I have been recording my bike rides for the past 1000 days.

I have been on the bike 54.6% of the days I've tracked, averaged 24.22 miles for ride length and that is like riding 13.23 miles every day!

Out of curiosity, I've figured my cycling expenses during this time frame are approximately .68 cents per mile which is about $9 every day. But wouldn't you know it, there is more gear I'd like! Guess I just have to ride more =)

Btw, I'm not complaining about expenses, I just find it interesting. I geared up from scratch starting in July/'06 having never had a 'bike shop' bike before or a helmet! The fun factor and health benefits are priceless, don't you think?

Spring Gardening

We took a day off the bikes to try to catch up on some yard work. Jeff did a great job tilling the entire garden!

I'll probably just do a little gardening this year, perhaps 7 rows running the length of the garden. I'm considering some rows of zinnias or other easy care flowers and for eatables focusing on the veggies we use the most for salsas, grilling and favorite Italian style dishes. I'll plant the rows wide apart so we can till between them and even mow between them if the weeds start to get way out of control on me!

April Metric

With the temps reaching the 60's F, we are wearing shorts at last, hooray!! There are a lot of spring blooms like this pretty tree.

I've had knee pain this week, so I was a little worried when we set out today, but riding with only Jeff meant I'd be able to ease off anytime I felt too much strain. There were some aches, but I think the knees are getting better.

It was just Tiverton/Little Compton again, so I won't bother with the same old map! We did a lot of retracing on this ride, but it was interesting to feel the terrain in the other direction and I saw quite a few different features of houses and things. You can see the repeating parts in the elevation profile.

The speed profile.

April Metric
66.73 miles
4:08 hours
16.1 mph average
+2,986 elevation
fuel: latte before riding, then 2 bottles mango Gatorade, 1 toffee-chocolaty-nutty-yummy Power Bar

For the week, I did 5 rides/159.66 miles. Today's ride got me past 2,000 total miles year to date. My outside mileage is finally greater than my trainer rides: 1,048.97 outside!

Happy Easter!

My Uncle and Aunt sent me a Bunny Buck this year which really surprised me as I'd not heard of such a thing. I opened the card, thought 'hey money!', looked at it a little closer and laughingly saw the bunny and realized it was play money...but no! I picked it up and it felt like real money!! Upon closer inspection one can see the sticker part and the card included some info about the fund raising aspect of Bunny Bucks.

The funniest part was quietly leaving it out for Jeff to find and then watching him go through the same thought process =)

As for last week's ride report, April is proving to be a tough month to ride in, with wind and unseasonably low temps. It briefly snowed yesterday. I did 2 group rides and 2 solo rides for a total of 102.25 miles.

I also started the spring yard work this week and sawed a lot of shrubs back. My shoulders and the insides of my forearms are really feeling it, so let's count that as exercise too!

Local Shop Ride

Jeff ate a bug today, so I think that means it's truly spring now! I'm glad I have managed to postpone my first bug swallowing of the season! The weather was fairly warm, sunny and windy and we went to Village Bicycle for a group ride. Ribuck met up with us there.

As you can see from the map, we could call this the 'butterfly ride'. It annoys me when I forget to turn the Garmin on at the very start of rides, but I did remember before we got too far. The red/end pin shows the more precise location of the shop.

Riders sorted out into different speed zones in the first few miles and Jeff, Ribuck and I ended up in a group of 10 for most of the ride. This was a really good bit! On the 'train' to Horseneck Beach with a tailwind!

We did 36.51 miles at 16.3 mph average.


I've been riding on my own or with people I know well lately and I found it a little hard to get comfortable riding with strangers again. I was frustrated with the amount of yo-yoing I did off the back for awhile. I'd be on a wheel and hit a pothole or something and get nervous and drop back and then have to work to bridge back, again and again. Eventually, I got it together and did better, particularly if I was on Jeff or Ribuck.

At one point in the ride we had a bunch of wild turkeys cross the road in front of us! It was nice to see the views in sunlight for a change rather than shrouded in fog and clouds. I struggled with a bit of a mechanical for a ways when my chain got stuck in the big ring. When I finally got it free with some awful cracking and popping sounds, everything seemed to be rattling, but after some shifting up and down it got sorted out again. Ribuck had an encounter with another gray pickup truck and a flat when we were nearly back to the shop! Not sure what is with the trucks going for him lately, he's a good, predictable rider!

It's been a great weekend of biking with 2 fun group rides totaling more than 70 miles! I'm looking forward to catching up with the blog reading to see what everyone else was up to =)

Weekly Miles and a Group Ride

It was kind of a rainy week and I didn't feel like wrestling my trainer tire back onto my road bike, so I had 3 days off! I still did 3 cx rides and 1 group road ride for a total of 106.46 miles.

The rain cleared out and we had an overcast, windy morning for the Saturday group ride. Seven started out together though we broke into groups of 5 and 2 in Little Compton.

I could have ridden sweep like this all day!!

The elevation profile. We can find some hard flats here on the coast!

And the speed profile, 15.8 mph average.

The only downside of the ride? Worms. Guess who cleaned both bikes? Well, to be fair Jeff did go to the dump in trade for me cleaning bikes. But, ewwwww...here's my rear brake...I'll leave the condition of the down tube to your imagination!

The weather is supposed to be even better tomorrow and we hope to do a local shop ride then, if I can get up after being out late tonight!