September Metric Century

It's hard to believe that the goldenrod is blooming and it is officially fall! I am so happy with the drier weather. Saturday, I had a beautiful, sunny day for my metric. Once again, I postponed it toward the end the month and started to worry if I'd get it done, especially when I canceled one attempt due to lack of willingness to fight regular gusts of 30mph for 63 miles!

I felt great for about 45 miles averaging over 15mph and not feeling the pains I'd been having lately. After that, the foot numbness and a backache started in together and sapped all my energy. Fortunately, Jeff came out to join me for the last 23 miles, so I had some company and we tootled along enjoying the good weather and sights since there won't be as much opportunity for that soon.

The evidence from Garmin, showing 62.23 miles (just enough!).

It's getting a bit embarrassing to post the same route over and over, but it's what I manage to get out to ride...

Fall Is In The Air...

But last Sunday, on a summery though gray day, Jeff and I went to cheer for our friend Jamie competing in the Firmman RI half-Ironman. It's tricky to pick a good spot for watching those kinds of endurance races, but looking at the bike course map, I realized that we could drive to Ninigret Park and leave the truck there while we biked out to Rte 1 where we would actually get to see Jamie 3 times if we timed it right and pedaled back and forth on Rte 1 a bit. Driving out to Ninigret, the bike course looked more hilly than ever before! At one point, there was an huge snapping turtle crossing the road and we hoped it would be clear of the bike lane by race time!

As we biked to the first lookout, we saw the first riders coming through and hurried to cross the 4 lanes of Rte 1 and get the camera and cowbell out of the pack. We hoped we hadn't missed him! But soon we spotted him coming and looking really fast and comfortable out there.

I was having fun cheering for everyone because you can't stand there on the side of the road with a cowbell and not ring it for people! Some people were in a 'zone', but most smiled and waved and many actually thanked me as they rode by! Too funny! I was thinking, 'If you can be talking to me, you can be pedaling faster!' Awhile after seeing Jamie go past we went to our next lookout where the riders were coming downhill and using one of the on ramps to get back on Rte 1. Jamie came flying down the hill and cornering while at the same time reaching for a water bottle to throw to me! Yeah! Swag!!! You can see the pic on his blog along with his full race report. Again, we moved on to the next lookout for one more sighting about 16 miles from the finish where Jeff got this picture:

And I snapped this one of him waving and getting ready to throw another bottle:


It was a busy day for biking with all the tri riders, but also some people just out for their usual loops. Then, we saw this peleton go by both ways on Rte 1! I think they must have been part of the Bob Beal Omnium Master's races going on at Ninigret that weekend. They got some cowbell too, of course!

I have not managed to build up from summer yet, but I am enjoying the cooler weather and feeling like I will start getting out more again. I've been having numb feet on my rides and some knee pain, so that can make me feel reluctant to head out for a ride a lot of days, but I think I need to just get out there and ride through it and I'll start feeling good again. I was very happy to be out for 20 miles earlier today!

August Metric

A break in the humidity happened just in time for me to get my August metric century with a few days to spare! I rode X6 and started off very well, but mid way my feet got very sore with a pins and needles sensation and it killed my tempo. I also ran out of water and was painfully dry as the weather was still pretty hot.

Jeff kept me company for much of the ride, joining me 22 miles in and, fortunately, with eight miles still to go, Jeff took the turn to the house, grabbed some water and brought it to me in the truck. What a relief!!

At Sachuest Point, I stopped short to get a photo of this buck with velvety antlers. He wasn't at all frightened, even walking toward me a little! This is the closest I've gotten to a deer out there as they are usually out across the field more.

Garmin actually shut off on me during the ride, but I managed to notice pretty quickly and you can see I still got a distance of 63.30 miles. With the crazy pains in both feet and being dehydrated, my speed ended up at 14 mph overall...which was disappointing especially after a fairly zippy start to the ride. Oh well, I just don't do well in summer weather!

I'm really looking forward to the fall and starting to ramp up mileage again. I had a good 20 mile X6 ride today. I think the next metrics will feel a lot better, assuming we don't have early snowstorms or something!!

Hot Just to Watch

As I'm not feeling very energetic in this hot August weather, I got my bike 'fix' vicariously on Sunday by watching our friend Chris race the Blount Seafood Crit in Fall River, Mass. He was in the Cat 3 race and worked awfully hard. It seemed like he was rarely on a wheel as he rode past us. His 12th place finish was excellent! You can read his write up on his blog. But I'll share a few of my pics with you too, starting with my best shot of the day:

I'm still getting used to my new camera and get a lot of rear shots when I'm slow on the shutter.

There were lots of splits and if you look closely here, you'll see Chris making an heroic effort to bridge the gap, head down with the white shoulders.

I got a finish line video too.



If you googled to find pics of the race and are looking for someone specific, let me know, I might be able to help. I took some pics of the 3 man break and various pack shots that I would be happy to share.

Jeff and I missed out on watching Jamie at a Tri this weekend, he finished in spite of a crash and you should check out his blog post!!

3 Year Bike Stat Anniversary

Is there a standardized gift for year 3? Aluminum? Carbon? Maybe it's only spandex, LOL! That's OK, I could use some new shorts!

The summer slump continues, but history shows me that I'll recover. The chart of my rides and miles by year:

And I have two graphs showing nearly the same thing; I just couldn't decide which one was prettier!

All the weeks spread out with outdoor miles in blue and trainer miles in red:

All miles by week and year:

Hope those colors don't make your eyes cross!

Well, not too much to be learned from these, they are just fun to post! Obviously, I like to ride in fall and spring and the computrainer made a big difference.

(These charts vary ever so slightly from the previous charts I posted of each year as I had to tweak the way I numbered the weeks to make the years line up right. Also, I added a previously missing trainer ride into 2007 that it turned out I had stats for after all. There were some others that I didn't record, believe it or not =P!)

"No matter what..."

Sometime last week I said to Jeff, "Let's go mountain biking this weekend, no matter what." That was before I bought the new trail runners and did 4.30 miles on a whim! In fact, when I set up the mtn bike 'date' with Jeff, if you had told me I'd be doing a run like that yesterday, I wouldn't have believed you and laughed hysterically at the very idea!

Apparently the run didn't excuse me from mountain biking! Since I wasn't really feeling that bad, just tired with achy shoulder blades and some muscle pain in the groin/hip area, I agreed to go as long as Jeff got the bikes ready and lifted them in and out of the truck. We went to Freetown State Forest to ride.

I haven't biked off road in ages, so I was quite pathetic, but it was so fun anyway. I had to walk over the large cobble washouts and picked my way on foot around a couple of very muddy, yellowy-green, frog filled puddles after very nearly going in one. My body felt fine as long as I was on the bike, but it was hard going when I walked.

We actually rode right through this sort of puddle easily, but it got quite boggy further on and I didn't feel inclined to get the camera out and be easy mosquito food.

Are we there yet?

Jeff got us to 'The Ledges', our goal, before turning and heading back to the start.

The loop we did came out to 10.42 miles.

The First "Run" (...er...shuffle?)

After shelling out for the trail runners today, I felt like I couldn't let them just sit in the box, so I went for a test run this evening. I hoped a positive attitude would get me through it and the biking fitness might carry over a bit.

I optimistically picked a route mostly off road. It turned out to be 4.30 miles (I posted it wrong on Twitter and Facebook earlier). I ran some of it, jogged slowly for most and walked a few bits like the muddy areas and some of the hill at the end.

My aerobic fitness was fine as my legs couldn't go fast enough to cause me to have any breathing trouble, LOL! I really felt it in my feet and I guess groin to hip, some muscle there was not happy. Trail running is hard too because I had to pick up my feet so far and place them somewhat carefully and try not to have too much lateral movement which I am not used to at all. There was crushed stone that got tiring as it made me slip back a little with each step.

The trail was very pretty. Here are a couple of turn stiles by a cow pasture.

Boardwalks and bridges keep you out of the worst of the mud.

Have you ever noticed that it's impossible to take a pic of your own foot that doesn't make your leg look weird? The shoes felt really good so far.

After the exercising, I thought it would feel good to wade in the cold ocean, so we took the dogs over to the town beach. It's very rocky there, but we had a good time. Silas even saved one of my flip flops when a wave took it off my foot and started to carry it away from shore! Then, he thought the flip flop belonged to him and barked at my feet, wanting it back!



I'm not sure how much of a rest I'll need after today's run, but hopefully I'll get out there on my feet again soon!