Friday Ride

Last week it rained consistently from Sunday through Thursday. But on Friday the rain let up so after the roads had some time to dry out I made a break for it to take a solo ride. I live on a small hill so when I start rides from my house I get to descend a great hill for a quarter mile which is really nice. Then I immediately start climbing a mile long hill to get to where I’m going. Climbing this hill without any sort of a warm up always induces the “I’m going to throw up” feeling by the time I get to the top. It doesn’t matter what my fitness level is I always get it. Luckily, it’s never come to fruition.

I decided to vary my usual route a little so I added a section of a longer route that I haven’t ridden for a while. Even though it was cold enough that I had to wear a jacket, rain pants and warm gloves it felt great to be outside riding again. When you ride inside on a trainer without doing many real outside rides it gives you a false sense that you are doing some good training. It’s always interesting to go for a real ride to see what you’ve got to work on. I’ve definitely increased my aerobic ability through doing my trainer rides but my legs just weren’t where I wanted them to be.

So the long and short of it is I need to add squats back to my training routine. I’m not a big fan of squats but they seem to give me the strength to master those hills. If you’ve got some good leg strength exercises that don’t include squats I’d love to hear them.

There were a lot of signs of mother natures rain wrath as I rode along. Most of the yards had water still pouring off of them down the street because at this time of the year the ground just can’t handle any more water. As I approached one street I encountered a small river that had formed across a street. The newly formed street river was only a couple of inches deep but as I pulled up a four wheel drive drove through it at full speed thus spraying a wave of water at least 4 feet high. Did I mention this was on a very rural road which was mainly driven by 4 wheel drive trucks with the number 3 painted on the back of them? Lucky for me I hadn't crossed the river yet. I decided I would have to tactically time my crossing when I was sure there wouldn’t be any 4X4's crossing at the same time. I’m sure I would have been a dream water target if I hadn’t timed my water crossing just right.

Ride Summary:
Had a great ride with plenty of energy left in the tank at the end.
Need to work on leg strength because some hills were harder than I wanted them to be.
Worked on fine tuning the fit of my bike while I was out and finally got the seat height and position right.
Still messing around with the barrel adjusters because my bike seems to have a mind of it’s own in some gears. Very frustrating.
Mileage - 51 Miles
Elevation Gain – 2348 feet