Mosey Monday

(In honor of the Tour de France this month’s distances are in kilometers)

This Ride: 41.4 km
Kona Distance: 3,321.5 km
Month to date: 444.2 km
2010 Total: 4072.3 km
Pace to 8,456.78 km mile goal in 2010: +101.4 km

Absolutely gorgeous morning!  The sunrise is now after our 5:45 start and these summer morning skies are spectacular.  They are full of color and constantly changing.  It is an absolute pleasure to be out early.  A thirty degree temperature difference from yesterday afternoon doesn’t hurt either.

Alex joined the ride for the first time this morning.  He is a member of the congregation and has lost well over 150 lbs over the last year and a half.  He is training for a triathlon and plans to ride the Seagull Century.  He did pretty well.  We started with 7 riders, but soon, I looked up and we had 8.  I don’t know where he came from!

I had a few maintenance tweaks to perform this morning.  My right pedal didn’t want to hold the cleat very tightly so near the end of the ride I tightened it.  I continued to dial in the gears, fine tuning those.  I think I have it pretty close to acceptable.  As Mike suggested in the comments to yesterday’s post, I’ll have to consider the value of continuing with PP.

I was reflecting this morning on how a 25 mile ride is pretty routine these days, and a 50 miler is not an extraordinary event.  Last year at this time (and earlier this year as well) a 35 minute ride of 8 miles was considered a good and acceptable workout.  How things change.