Eventually, I'm going to get tired of talking about the cycling. Since that day has not yet come, though, you get more bike posts. This one is about MORE than the bike, at least. Maybe even some things completely unrelated to the bike! Maybe.
So, I've decided not to do a Hometown 20 weekly report for last week, now that I've put it off for so long. At this point, I would be posting one today only to post another one tomorrow. It'll be a black mark on my challenge record, but I can live with that.
Speaking of tomorrow, I have no idea what the scale is going to say. All week long it's been saying 176-177, then yesterday it spit out a 175. Today, it's back up to 177, for reasons I cannot begin to fathom. I'm cautiously optimistic about tomorrow, though...maybe I'll drop 6 lbs. overnight or something! At the very least, I should see some happy measurements--my legs are feeling decidedly less squishy these days. And when I looked at myself in the mirror this morning, I actually looked normal-sized. Of course, I had skinny days back when I was pushing 220, so that observation may not be worth much.
My overall numbers have been good this week--calories hovering right around 1800 every day, plenty of water, and scads of exercise. After the ride this morning, my total exercise time was about 6 1/2 hours, 3400ish calories burned (I don't have the HRM on hand). Nearly all of those 6 1/2 hours were at an aerobic HR, also, so the fat-burn percentage was also high. In theory, anyway.
My average speeds on the rides have been going down pretty consistently, as I start getting used to spinning in a lower gear and keeping the HR down. I've also been including my warmup in the overall times, which skews the numbers a bit compared to the first two rides. Ten minutes at 9-11 mph makes a difference in a 65-minute ride, but will make less difference as the rides get longer. That said, my speeds aren't terrible now--I went from 14.4 mph on the first ride with an average HR of 142 to 13.1 mph on this morning's ride with an average HR of 132. I rode virtually the same route plus 3 miles, so the terrain was the same. My gears were lower, my average cadence about the same. Slower speeds are to be expected under those conditions, even though it chaps me a little to see the numbers go backwards. Patience, grasshoppa. :)
I've been giving some thought to how I'm going to keep up my training schedule on my mini-vacation in September. I don't really want to bring my bike with me--the packing and checking and worrying doesn't seem worth it for a weekend trip. However, I do want to get at least ONE ride in, probably Friday morning. The weather will likely be fantastic, unless they have an early cold snap or something. The scenery will be equally gorgeous, since IIRC mid-September is leaf-changing season, at least for the maples. The thought of not riding in that makes me very sad.
My hometown has a good rail-to-trail down by the river, which goes 14 miles and hooks up with another trail that continues for another 26 miles. I think my love of biking was born on the Red Cedar trail. We used to ride the first leg of it when we were kids. My mom would pack the three of us up and we'd either drive down to the trail or ride down there (that part I don't remember), and ride from Menomonie to Irvington. It was less than 3 miles, and an all-day affair. :) I guess the oldest we could have been at the time were 11, 9, and 6, and we stopped at every rest area, sometimes packed a picnic. We probably didn't go that often...maybe once or twice a summer once Ryan could ride well enough. Since he was only 7 the summer she passed away, we probably went half a dozen times, tops. Still, it's one of my favorite memories of the things we did with her.
When I bought a decent mountain bike the summer after high school, I used to ride the trail every once in a while. The furthest I ever went was Downsville, where I stopped and had a lemonade with my Grandma before riding back. I think it was 14 miles round-trip, but it felt sooo long at the time.
Anyway...enough reminiscing. My point is, I've decided to ride the trail when I'm there in September. I've been getting info about bike rentals and whether the trail is even open in the fall. I think it's year-round, because they groom it for cross-country skiing in the winter. I only remember the trailhead depot being open in the summer, though, so I don't know. I guess I'll just have to drive over there and see. My plan is to rent a bike Friday morning and ride the entire trail round-trip. That would come out to be around 28-29 miles, which fits my century training exactly. I'll have to skip the 55-miler on Saturday (damn that wedding!), but I can at least get all the "short" rides in for that week. And I can say that I rode the entire Red Cedar Trail, which I've wanted to do since I was a kid.
In a last bit of cycling news, I've signed up for another group ride! It was one that I hadn't heard of before, but happened to be in a newsletter from my local bike shop. It's Tour de Pink on September 11th, a pledge ride for the Pink Ribbons Project. I'm planning to ride the metric century route, which, fortuitously, fits perfectly into my century training schedule also. I'll have a separate post begging you for donations in the near future. I'd do it now, but my personal donations page over there is currently blank except for the donation meter. I'm embarrassed to link it until I've put something clever in there (or, something, at least) to fill up the white space. :)
In non-bike news, my bottom wisdom tooth continues its hostile takeover of the right side of my face. It now controls most of the Right Cheek region, and possibly the village of Lymph Node to the south of Jawline. The good news is, the top right wisdom tooth has stopped trying to send reinforcements, so the pressure that was driving into my top teeth is now gone. The bottom one continues to swell and throb, though it does get better in the middle of the day. I don't know if it's the Advil or the sitting upright. Either way, I think a dentist visit is imminent. I'm going to try to get in tomorrow. In the meantime, I'm trying not to eat anything that requires me to bite through it completely or chew on both sides. Sigh.
Posted by Joy at August 4, 2005 09:22 AM