My (Is it Really?*) June Metric Century and Catching Up

(*The day started out with heavy gray clouds and light rain and 50F degree temps. A cold north wind blew the clouds apart so it finally got mostly sunny and temps rose to 64F. Not exactly typical June weather!)

Well, summer comes and my habits change dramatically as you've noticed from my blog hiatus! But I'm still here and haven't been as absent from cycling as my blog would indicate. However, I did take a whole week off for complete rest and recovery!

I have been thinking about taking a week off for awhile, but wanted to feel in control of it and not be doing it just because of laziness or because of a lack of motivation. Last week seemed like a good time as it rained most of the time and I was so at the end of my rope with traffic that I'd done the entire week before on the computrainer. I had some other things I wanted to catch up on. Also, I hadn't taken a week off the bike since the week ending July 19, 2008.

Here's my mileage by week chart to bring you up to date. The current week is incomplete, of course.

I was a little freaked out that I'd lose fitness fast, but after a few days I was so busy and sore from cutting back hedges and other yard work that I didn't feel the need for more exercise!

The week off turned out to be wonderful for my biking! My legs felt fresh and strong today. It was a little weird not to really be aware of them...no aches or pains or complaining muscles. I'd look down and it was sort of surreal to see my legs cranking away and they lasted great for the entire metric.

Given the cold wind everywhere and the damp cold by the beaches, I was in a long sleeve jersey and still cold enough for goose bumps at times. It got really weird later in my ride as the sun came out because the sun would be warming my back, but I was chilly at the same time from the wind. Felt kind of like being feverish!

I did 3 laps of my regular route and some extra back and forth bits to get the necessary miles. The pics were taken on my first and third trips to Sachuest Point today. From seeing my profiles, you are probably nearly as familiar with my bike terrain as I am!

Here's the speed profile. Yeah, I got a little tired toward the end, but the slow down actually had more to do with some school buses and UPS trucks slowing up traffic and me.

I've decided I like these Nutrigrain bars on rides better than various energy bars I've tried that are just too chewy for me. Note the long sleeves!

June Metric Stats
62.96 miles
3:58 hours
15.8 mph average...was at 16.2 'til the last miles and those buses, etc...had hoped to hang onto 16 'til the end =)
2,760' elevation gain
2 cereal bars and 2 bottles of Gatorade for fuel

Holiday Weekend

Happy Memorial Day weekend to those celebrating! It's officially planting time here in New England and I've been going around to the garden shops for supplies and working on the yard. Here's the freshly mulched herb bed by the patio/grill area. You can see a bit of oregano, thyme, sage and basil. I also have some other things like parsley, lavender, horehound and marjoram.

The veggie garden area has had another tilling and I have seedlings ready to plant out this week. It won't be a big garden this year, but it will be nice to have some organic goodies this summer. The dogs do enjoy the veggies too and would be very disappointed not to have over-sized zucchini to eat!

The Island is getting so busy and while I love the nice weather for so many things, in terms of biking, I'm really missing the peace and quiet of fall and wintertime. I rode 4 days/101.56 miles this week.

Anniversary

Yesterday was a milestone day, but not because of bike stats! Jeff and I celebrated our wedding anniversary, 11 years. Here's a snap of us from way back then! We were married at Sand Beach in Acadia National Park.

Yes, we did a short bike ride on our anniversary. For the week, I rode 4 days/103.49 miles. Ironically, I'm finding it harder to ride now that the weather is nicer! There are so many things to do outside that I get distracted away from the bikes. But balance in life is good and I'll be ok with it as long as I'm maintaining the bike fitness and being active in other ways too.

Rainy Week

I only did 3 rides this week, the metric on the road bike and two short rides on the cx bike for a total of 106.46 miles.

This morning Jeff joined me on a rainy, foggy ride and I thought it was quite pretty, at least during the parts where I could see through my glasses!

Wrap Ups

Just a quick post to update the recent stats! For the past week, I did 5 rides around my short route for 111.88 miles total. For April, I rode 20 days and a total of 533.24 miles.

This is the weather outlook for the next week...I'm hoping I can get out to ride between the rain showers?!

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.

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!

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!

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.

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!

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.

1st Week of March

March arrived with snow and frigid temps, but things got way better today and we got some sun and warmth due to us! It was so nice, I had Jeff grill lunch for us.

Burgers with secret seasoning, caramelized onions and mushrooms with thyme and a splash of sherry vinegar on a toasted english muffin with a little lite mayo. Very summery! We ate indoors though...too much snow on the patio!

After a little rest to let lunch settle, we felt fueled and ready to ride. Here's Jeff showing his pasty white legs! Yikes, makes the pic look overexposed! Those are a pair of the new shorts I ordered for him recently too. I think the gray looks good.

We rode out Ocean Drive and back past the glammy Newport Country Club. No danger of wayward golf balls today as the ground is so muddy.

It got up to about 61 degrees and felt very warm in general, though a bit chilly in the hollows and along the beaches in the sea mist.

The rides this week were 1 outdoor ride of 35.99 miles and 5 computrainer rides of 122.12 miles, a total of 158.11 for the week.

This week's computrainer total was really boosted by one ride in particular, 46.46 miles. It took me 4 hours as there was over 4,000 feet of climbing! Lately, I've been treating most of the computrainer rides as base mile rides and not worrying about intervals or speed work, but I will begin that soon. I will miss the relative ease of base miles, I'm sure!!

Base mile trainer time is the non guilty way to watch a lot of TV. A couple posts ago, Buttsy asked me what I've been watching. Most recently, I'm working through Firefly with Jeff watching that too. I've watched all of Dr. Who, Samantha Who, all sorts of movies. As for current shows, I like Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men, Ugly Betty, The Office, 30 Rock and Biggest Loser. Also two detective shows, Life and Life on Mars. I put the sound volume up a little louder than usual, but not too much. If it's a lot of talk, I'll have the captions turned on so I don't miss subtle things. Bike race footage has been good too, of course!

Sometimes, I do just watch the numbers and profile as I ride. When I do the intervals, I'll play a CTS dvd or something to follow. I'm not good at keeping track of time and what to do without the dvd telling me. When I start doing TT efforts on it, I'll just have the profile graphics so I focus.

I've just played around on the computrainer a bunch too. It's fun to see how fast I can pedal, most watts I can put out, etc... But I haven't done that sort of stuff in a way that counts as testing or training, yet.

February Wrap Up

Aside from the head cold, February's been a good month and I've met my expectations. Tonight, I did one more ride to wrap up the past week with 6 days of riding, a total of 123.94 miles. For the month, I rode outside 4 days/144.46 miles and inside 17 days/355.84 miles, a total of 500.30 miles. As hoped, I bagged my first thousand for the year and am currently at 1,050.34 miles in all. Here's the updated chart of my miles distributed by week.

I've started reading the book by Burke shown in my last post and so far I'm finding it very good. It's so clear and answering a lot of the questions that I've had. Hopefully a bit of study will give me a clear idea of what I need to do when I want to maintain and what I need to do when I want to increase intensity. I guess I'm looking for some reassurance that I'm doing the right sort of things in a sustainable way, or learn what to change. Also, I need all the ideas for drills and exercises to try. It's still all about having fun though! I just like to challenge myself!

Last Week

I did 5 days of riding and 100.90 miles all on the trainer this past week. I decided to take Friday and Saturday off to rest and try to recover from the cold I'm fighting. Yesterday was actually my worst day and I napped, read all of my new Peter Robinson book and watched the AToC. I think I'm feeling a bit better today, so hopefully I'll be healthy soon!

As if the head cold wasn't making it hard enough to breathe, Silas stupidly charged a skunk last night and stinks! He feels sheepish and insecure since we aren't petting him, so he wants to be as close as possible for reassurance! Ack! Luckily Saffy was sensible and did not get sprayed.

I'm looking forward to the last Stage of the AToC today, but am afraid I will go into withdrawal when it's over!

Happy Valentine's Day!

This week, I got used to fastening my bike to the computrainer (we have to switch between my bike and Jeff's bike), warming up the trainer (miles I don't count!! gasp!!!), calibrating it and then starting the software for the course I want to do. It sounds like a lot of work when I write it out, but it really doesn't seem like it. I've already gotten quick at it, even after just a week.

In case you are familiar with the computrainer courses and wonder which ones I've been doing, so far they are:
Windach-Sternberg
Rudolstadt
Talladega
Whidbey Island Recovery
imn_outfortyk (not sure what that stands for)

I've also done Killington at the shop and downloaded it to use at home too. Jeff did it here the other night.

Speaking of downloads, there are so many free course downloads! The ones I'm really looking forward to trying soon are the time trial stages of the 2008 Tour de France!

It would be easy to get carried away and try to ride far more than my level of ability, so I keep reminding myself to take it easy! Also, I managed to hurt my left knee a little this week while lounging in the armchair. I put my heel on the ottoman and when I pressed down to pull it toward me, something made a suction/pop noise in my knee! It is a little sore, but seems to be getting better. I've been doing easier profiles and easy to moderate effort while it heals.

Talladega was the hardest so far with 2600 feet of climbing and inclines up to 9% over 20 miles. That is quite a bit of work on a trainer since you pedal the entire time, even downhill. Whidbey Island Recovery is a 30 mile flat/downhill course that is great for keeping HR and effort down while letting you have a good spin.

Today is a rest day. I did 5 trainer rides and 1 outside ride for a total of 154.30 miles this week.

I am currently at 825.50 year to date miles, so I anticipate crossing 1,000 by the end of February!

Feeling Better!

I was feeling a little under the weather the past few days and ended up taking 3 days off the bike, despite being very anxious to try the new computrainer. So last week's stats were 4 days of riding and 121.16 miles.

Today was a gorgeous, warm day and I was torn between riding outside and getting on the new computrainer. Well, I decided that despite being warm, it would be a dirty ride outside and there could still be some ice. In fact, I later felt like I made the right decision when I saw on the Narragansett Bay Wheelmen message board that someone crashed on ice on today's ride and is having surgery. I don't know her, but feel so sorry it happened to her and hope she heals quickly!

I decided to do the same course on our computrainer that I did the first day on the shop computrainer, back on January 16th, so I could compare. Having felt off the past few days I didn't try to 'race', I just 'went for a ride' to see what would happen (which is how I did that shop ride too). Last time I did the 20.36 miles at 16.5 mph average and 144 average watts. This time I did 17.8 mph average and 159 average watts. Could it be improvement already?!

January Wrap Up

January turned out to be a rather pivotal month as trainer riding finally 'clicked' for me. A few things contributed to that, primarily my determination to keep a positive attitude, road conditions that did not allow safe outside riding and the discovery of a fairly local computrainer multiride center. Besides reading about bloggers going through similar efforts to keep riding, it's helped enormously that Jeff is doing the trainer as well as ride buddies ribuck and Lynn, who just bought her first trainer this month.

At the start of January, I had it in mind that I'd try to do 500 miles, though I wasn't sure that would be feasible on the trainer. Turns out, it was about right!

Out of 27 days of riding, 25 were done on the trainer. I feel so relieved that I managed to check off my January metric century on what was probably the *only* possible day for it! I did 83.65 miles outside and 466.39 on the trainer for a total of 550.04 miles.

Since the week also ends today, I'll report that I did 6 days of riding and 116.81 miles. It doesn't look like much yet, but since I don't have a picture for today's post I'll show you my graph for 2009 miles by week, just getting started. I love seeing the lines grow!

For February, I want to keep up the frequent rides and work more with the training dvd's and features that come with computrainer we've ordered. I want to get some of the CTS ones I've tried at the shop to use at home too. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I can do 2/12 of the Metric Century a Month Challenge!

Blow Out Week

I've done 2 group computrainer sessions this week. Wednesday, Jeff went with me. The profile was set on an easy course with minimal hills and trending downhill overall (Whidbey Island) and the dvd was a CTS climbing workout. Because the course was relatively flat, we could follow the dvd and change our cadence and effort as needed. It was a fun way to use the computrainer, though I also like just following a course like I did before.

Friday, I did the CTS cycling for fitness interval workout while on the same course as Wednesday's ride.

Jeff and I have been using our old tires on the trainer so we don't wear down new ones. Well, apparently other people do that too and when we were setting up on Wednesday we heard that some one's tire had blown earlier in the day. They told us it made a ticking noise before it blew. That turned out to be valuable information later on! Jeff's wheel starting ticking, he stopped pedaling and we all looked with dismay at how deformed his tire was! He got off his bike and let the air out right away and spared us having to hear the bang. One of the mechanics had a new tire on the wheel in no time and Jeff was able to continue his workout.

It turned out that the shop was getting trainer specific tires in stock the next day, so I planned to pick up one for each of us at my Friday session.

Friday, I got the new tires and one of the mechanics quickly put it on my wheel over my old tube. Well, maybe the tube was pinched a little, or there was sand or it was just old. A few minutes into my session, the bike felt bouncy and as I was looking to see if the front tire was flat and slowed my rpms, I heard tick, tick, tried hard to stop the wheel, but it immediately went BOOM under me. Ack! I'm glad that happened in the trainer and not outside! I'll bet it shows up on my heart rate graph! The new tire was fine, but the tube had a big hole in it. The mechanic did a quick tube change and I was back on the bike for the rest of the workout.

I've also done 4 rides at home on the Kinetic, but Thursday's ride was only 30 minutes. My legs felt heavy and I just wanted to loosen them up a little and have them ready for Friday's group ride. I did a total of 103.37 miles this week. Today is my recovery day unless I get restless later!

You can probably tell that Jeff and I are smitten with the computrainer. We are seriously thinking about buying one for home use...maybe very soon! They are expensive, but occasionally we get something big for both of us that counts for all the little holidays and birthdays and most of Christmas, all at once. I'll let you know as soon as we decide for sure!

Weekly Stats

I rode 6 days, 124.46 miles, all on the trainer. I've had a rest today, so I can start a new week fresh tomorrow!