Catching Up

by ponderingpastor on August 16, 2011

These Rides: 132.2 miles
Month: 330.4 miles
2011: 4,604.8 miles
Total since 1/1/2010: 10,724.5 miles

It has been a while (8/4/11) since I last posted any rides. I’ll use this post to bring you up to date.

Friday, August 5th was a great day for a ride. It was the regular breakfast ride to Annapolis, with pleasant temperatures and great company. As I recall, about a half dozen of us made it to breakfast. Following that ride, I continued on, riding up to the airport and doing both a clockwise and counterclockwise loop. On my way back, I saw a group of senior riders. The youngest may have been over 70. May I still be on the bike then. Later in the day, I added almost 3 miles as I dropped my car off at the body shop for repairs. Total distance for the day = 73.3 miles.

Later that evening, we loaded up Lori’s new to her car and headed off to Ocean City. I tried to take the bike, but couldn’t get the bike rack to work on the car in the short amount of time we had before leaving, so I left the bike at home and sat on the beach all week. I read, got browner, and gained some weight. The rest was nice. We returned late Saturday, 8 days later. Rain was heavy on Sunday. No ride.

Before going to the beach, I had planned to ride a 200k on the Monday following our return. The forecast was for scattered thunderstorms all day, so on Sunday I arranged for the ride to be shifted to Wednesday, the one day all week where there was a decent forecast. I’m glad I made the switch. I went out for Mosey Monday’s Ride, got in 22.4 miles with the last part in a light drizzle. Shortly after ending the ride, the rain poured down. I looked to go out again later in the day, but the thunderstorms were pretty persistent all day. It would clear up, and then, another cell would bloom. Most were very localized … right over any route I could take from home.

Tuesday opened beautiful. The skies were clear. The temperature was in the mid 60’s. I arranged to ride the 5:46 ride (not fast) because I’m planning the 200k for Wednesday and didn’t want to overexert. As it turns out, one of our new riders, Barry, was coming out for the first time after his wife’s sudden death a couple of days ago. We resolved to ride an easy pace with Barry and had a dozen riders out. It was an easy conversational pace. Ann Brennan was also out. At the end, I added a few more miles, with even more planned for later in the day (since the car is still in the shop and there are some errands to run). For the first part of the day, I logged 36.5 miles. I hope to have 50 by the end of the day.

Tomorrow should prove to be quite a day. I’ll be riding Sailing Down to Solomons again, with a twist. I’m going to ride to the start and back home again after. I estimate that will give me 150 miles on the day, my longest day ever. It will be solo. I’ll leave home somewhere just before 5:00 am and who knows when I will get home. I plan to ride an easy ride, focusing mostly on my heart rate and cadence. I want to finish strong rather than exhausted. My plan right now is to minimize time off the bike also. We’ll see how that goes once I hit Sweet Sue’s some 120 miles into the ride. Stay tuned, as they say.