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| My Salsa Vaya (Factory Image - Mine is much cooler looking) - Commuter Rig |
Last Thursday morning my alarm was set for my 5:00am bicycle commuter wake up. The alarm went off and I thought to myself what in the world am I doing?????? Reset it for 6:00am and drove to work. That morning I decided it was time to take some time off of the bike, so I told myself that I would look at my training schedule (Yeah Right I have no schedule I just ride or run or swim or lift or play tennis), adjust some things, and decide a better way to finish out the commuter season and train for the 60 Mile Iron Cross race October 10th.
First thing I came up with was that I would go back to Boot Camp Conditioning class Mon-Wed-Fri and that would require me to drive those days. So that would leave Tue-Thur for commuting and Sat-Sun for weekend rides. I would run Mon-Wed-Fri while my son practiced football and try to sneak off to the pool every chance I got.
Today I rode to work again - 5 days off of the bike. I came up with a brilliant blog post - 5 Things I Learned on my Bike Sabattical! Now I just hope I have 5 of them!
1. Bike Maintenance is as much fun as Bike Riding but not nearly as efficient at burning calories. My Single Speed Mountain Bike needed some loving to get her ready for the upcoming winter rides so I spent some time on Sunday getting her cleaned up and deciding what I needed new and put that list together. She is going to be so happy with me come October when I start riding her again.
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| A picture of Todd and I on our bike tour - the big reason I have so many miles |
2. Effective today I am only 500 miles away from my 2009 total bike mileage. That is easily wiped out in 1 typical month so this will be the most mileage I have ever ridden in 1 year come the middle of September. Do I push it and shoot for 7000 miles for the year or do I just let it all fall in place and take what I have? A point to ponder. What will 7000 miles get me? Nothing at all. So I will probably just let it all fall in place!
3. I may have a lot of bike miles in but I can say for a fact that I have done interval type bike training less than 10 times all year long. This needs to change because next year I hit the Masters 45+ age group and I think I could have some fun competing with my peers in that age group but I need to grow some fast twitch muscle fibers instead of my long/steady/plodding twitch muscles I have developed.
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| My SS Mountain/Snow Bike out on the trails last winter |
4. I cannot wait to ride on the snowmobile trails again this winter. Last year I found the perfect set-up on my SS to make this a great time and fun training. I even pictured myself riding out to the local cross country trails with my skis on my backpack and wondering what types of looks I would garner with that look!
5. I really love riding my bike and there were about 100 times over the last 5 days that I just wandered off into deep thought about how bad I wanted to ride my bike. I even shouldered my SS Cross Bike to carry it upstairs on Sunday but I put her back and let the love grow even deeper. I wish I lived in a much bike-friendlier city but I will do my best to make it as bike friendly as possible!
1 comment:
Nice blog, nice thoughts. Back in the day I was lifting and swimming with my bikin too, now the years on me make me pick one, and I picked bike'n.
Me too, thinking about snow riding. There is certainly special with snow riding.
DAve
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