I Didn’t Expect to Set a PR on Mosey Monday!

Being the ultimate procrastinator, I neglected to re-assemble my Kona after picking it up from the bike shop on Saturday.  Therefore, there were no lights and no docking station for my Garmin.  Rather than assemble all that this morning and since I was already running late, I unleashed the fixie for another ride.  It turns out the decision worked well.

It was about 40°F when we met at the Rusty Bridge this morning, and there were quite a few riders out.  Many had ridden 200k rides or more over the weekend, so the stories were flowing pretty well.  As half the group split off to do an extra hill in Round Bay, four of us stayed on Old County Road and kept the chatter going.  We had a good pace going and the fixie was riding smooth as silk.  On our return leg, down the hill on B & A, the fixie just wanted to go.  I was along for the ride, trying to keep up with the pedal rotations.  I didn’t realize until the end of the ride that my 157 RPM had resulted in a personal record speed on the fixie!  We topped out at 35.6 mph!  I had never been able to exceed 35 mph when trying.

Shortly after the record breaking section, Scott front flatted.  The repair was quick, and we continued along at a nice reasonable, yet brisk pace.  I added a 5k loop at the end of the ride to get very close to my morning distance goal of 25 miles.  I arrived home just as Lori was leaving for work.  I’ll need to get out of the house a little sooner in the morning if I want to keep picking up these miles in preparation for the Fleche.

When I was looking back in my riding log to determine whether or not this ride had a personal speed record for the fixie, I realized that last Friday’s ride of 60 miles was more significant than I thought.  I’ve only had one ride on the fixie longer than this 60 mile ride.  The strength training that comes from riding and not coasting is helpful, and I’ll need to keep it up as we move toward mid-April.  We also exceeded 1,000 miles on the fixie this morning.

It was a good day for a bike ride.

This Ride: 24.8 miles
Month: 234 miles
2012: 509.5 miles
Total since 1/1/2010: 14,363.1 miles