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Thursday, July 19, 2012

Cycling

Hey everyone that still reads this space!
It looks like my last post was over a month ago and I'm sorry about that. The truth is that I haven't been running too much and I haven't made it a priority to come into this space for a while. I do miss some of the lovely bloggers that I read regularly - and I will catch up with you all tomorrow.

What's been going on lately? Calvin was working in Windsor for a whole week, and then had a week's vacation so that accounted for half the time. We usually spend our time watching TV, going for walks, running errands, playing pool and fighting over which movies to watch on Netflix (documentaries often win, as well as not-too-dumb comedies).

 Looking back through my posts I've noticed that HM training only reached week 4. While it has almost definitely ended (for now) it's hard to pinpoint why. I guess my dumb speed challenge side-tracked it as my knee had a rough time after it. And then it became clear that I wouldn't be in town for the race weekend of the race I'd chosen. I might start again for a September race if I feel like it, but don't hold your breath :)

I've been keeping active by cycling though, as I bike to almost everywhere I have to go. I've run out of bus tickets and biking sure beats paying $2.50 each time I jump on the bus. As I spend about 20-40minutes cycling everywhere everyday, I decided that I wanted to do a long ride with a friend. This is the same friend I went to Malden with another time and fell and hurt my hip a little and acquired a massive bruise on my thigh. Anyway, we've done a couple of trail rides together and we've been waiting for HIS hip to heal from a fall he had ages ago. We decided to head out at some point this week to say we rode to Amherstburg. We had to settle on Thursday, as Ramadan starts on Friday (tomorrow).

I woke up at 0530 and we headed out at 6am. It was a perfect day with clouds overhead and a few showers as we reached each destination. There wasn't really anything to see in Amherstburg at 07:30 in the morning, so after a stop at Tim's we headed back. We managed 36miles (58km) in just under 3 hours, which is just as good a starting point as any. My bum quite hurts, but I'm pleased to say that most things worked out. For next time, I would try to remember that Gatorade doesn't sit well in my tummy after an hour and that I'd like to bring sunglasses if it was sunny outside.

I have been waiting to see how this ride goes (I should really wait to see how my legs feel tomorrow morning) to set down some goals, and here they are! They make up a list of goals I'd like to see accomplished on the bike, but I am setting no order (other than logic, shorter/easiest first) or time limit on them (perhaps before snow falls?).
  • Bike from Windsor-Point Pelee-Windsor, ~150km roundtrip, but I'd like to camp for a night there.
  • (Metric) Century Ride, September 29th, 2012.
  • Bike from Windsor-Lambeth, 198km (~10hours)
I would like to buy a pair of padded shorts soon, as my bum HURTS after 3 hours on the bike. I'd also love to have a new bike, preferably one who's front tyre doesn't wobble and with brakes that work perfectly. While this bike is in good enough condition that I feel confident cycling with it for 50km, I feel that a road bike would be infinitely smoother and a little faster :)

I don't suppose anyone has a road bike they don't use sitting in their basement, and be willing to ship it to me?

1 comment:

  1. The best advice I got about your butt hurting when you bike is to ride more. Padded shorts help a ton, but time spent in the saddle is what's going to build up the butt callouses.

    Also, your goals are AWESOME.

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