So Far..

I think logging ride days and miles makes me even more conscious of how quickly time passes! Since a quarter of the year is up I figured I'd post some stats so far. I'm very happy with the miles, but want to build up speed. I've been too content with base miles and will have to push myself more. Hopefully I'll get there doing intervals and group rides with friends to inspire me.

Here's my table showing number of days and miles biked by month.

And, the miles by week chart that you are familiar with. My outside miles are catching up to the trainer ones as the weather gets better. (The most recent week showing is not complete.)

YTD Outside Ride Details
Solo Rides: 15 (set out alone, but found friends on 5 of these rides)
Rides With Jeff: 8
Group Rides: 1
CX: 19
Road: 4

Group Ride to Wrap Up Week

I thought today was the nicest day of the week and luckily Jeff and I had plans to meet up with a couple of friends, Ed and ribuck. We did a popular Tiverton route of 30.34 miles at 16.8 mph average.




For the week, I did 5 rides/130.35 miles. I'm still taking the cx bike out most as the roads are sketchy in places with sand and potholes, so 3 cx rides and 2 roadie rides.

I shouldn't be eating this...

There is leftover birthday cake in the house (Jeff's). Here's a slice, appropriately served on the piggy plate. Om, nom, nom... I really should have done a longer ride today!

End of a Week

Today was the second outside ride of the year on my road bike. It is feeling good from its last tuneup and has a fresh set of tires on it.

Jeff and I did 55.22 miles at 15.8 mph average on many of the same roads as last weekend's long ride, but we didn't go as far and varied it a little.This was a farm we passed today.

For the week, I did 5 rides/147.72 miles. Four on the cross bike and 1 on the road bike. This was the first week of the year with no trainer time!

Bird Sightings

Today, I spotted these snow geese along my short route. One of the fun things about biking around here is the diversity of birds you see, especially in the colder months when they are migrating or over wintering.

Of course we have the common ones as well, like these mallards I see just about every ride in the same place. Maybe there will be ducklings later on.

March Metric +

I left the Island for this one--OMG! There are 3 bridges off the Island, but somehow people here get this mentality that it's burdensome to leave. I didn't think I'd get as irrational as that, but it's happened!

On Thursday and Friday, when it looked like the weather for Saturday would be sunny and high 30's/low 40'sF, Jeff and I started thinking of possibly doing the ride for the Metric Century a Month Challenge. We decided to start in Tiverton, ride south through Little Compton to Sakonnet Point shown here:

From there we rode East through farmland and little villages to Horseneck Beach and accidentally did the loop into the wind...aargh!!

We crossed the Westport River on this drawbridge:

And continued through Westport past the historical town farm:

We planned our ride to go past Village Bicycle so we could stop and say hello, pick up a spare tube and get tickets for the owner's Race Across America Fund Raiser Dinner. It's a very friendly shop! We only stopped briefly as we didn't want to stiffen up. We still had some ground to cover to get back to the starting point.

Here's how it looks on the map:

And the elevation profile:

I felt just OK for the ride as I was on the edge of being cold for a lot of it even though I've ridden in much worse. Some of the roads were so bumpy, it wore me down and made me achy (for the locals, I'm referring mainly to Peckham Road!). My feet were either cold or a little numb, so it got interesting putting a foot down at intersections, like when the foot's asleep and you're not quite sure it will hold you up. It wasn't pain, just sort of nagging discomfort.

March Metric + Stats
Road bikes (first outside ride of '09!)
68.35 miles
4:30 hours
15.2 mph average
fuel, egg muffin thing from drive thru on way to ride, 2 bottles of Gatorade in my fav flavors at the moment, tropical mango and strawberry orange

Now, only 9 more to go ;)

PS. Today's ride wrapped up a week, so I'll report the weekly stats as well. I rode 4 days outside/138.43 miles and 2 days inside/30.44 miles, a total of 168.87 miles.

Brrr

It looked warmer than it felt out there today! Just did my short loop for 23.83 miles. These fuzzy wuzzies were so friendly, I had to pause for a pic.

My toes are warming up still and I know they aren't going to be very happy in a hot shower in a minute!