More Training and a Tune-up

Yesterday, I went for a 24 mile ride with Andrew (we're training for the Bloomin' Metric Century).  According to our training schedule we were supposed to only do 17 miles, but since we did 21 last time, it just didn't seem right to do less this time.

This ride felt a lot harder than the last long ride.  Our average speed was just a little bit slower (just under 11 instead of just over 11 mph), but between the hills, the fact I didn't drink coffee before the ride, or because I had done a "hard" 14 miles the day before (averaging over 13 mph which is fast for me), I suppose this isn't to surprising.  (Boy! I'm good at coming up with excuses!).  It was a good ride with a very little off-roading (well, a mud path with some hills and some roots) as well as some gravel paths.  There was one gravel hill that I didn't make it up.  If I weren't clipped in, I might have tried a little bit harder, but I chickened out 10 feet from the top.

I'm just shy (less than 2 miles) of 400 miles on the Sofrider.  During the ride with Andrew, one of the bolts holding the rack to the frame came out.  I replaced it tonight (also adding lock-tight so that hopefully I won't have this problem in the future) and tightened all bolts on the rack.  I also adjusted the front and rear brakes as well as the front and real derailleurs.  I also found out one of the nuts holding the top of the seat had fallen off, so I replaced (and lock-tighted) that nut as well.

I'm not (yet?) as good at climbing big hills (my Garmin claimed one hill was 13% when I looked) as Andrew on his regular (diamond frame or DF), but I have no problem on the smaller hills and the flats.  On the big downhills, I'm regularly hitting just over 30 mph, so I'm making up for the slow climbs by being able to come down the hills faster (but still safely).

I'm still very much enjoying this new bike and as far as clipping in to the pedals goes, I wish I had done that sooner.

Bloomin' Metric Century

My friend Andrew and I have decided to do the Bloomin' Metric Century on May 20th (100 km or 62 miles).  Registering is the easy part.  Now all we have to do is train for it.

Bike New York has a nice page for training for an (imperial) century.  Andrew and I took their training numbers in miles, took them as kilometers instead of miles, and converted them to miles.

(For the 8th week, the century distance is not included.  As for most big events, the mileage the last week (or so) drops off).

I'm already riding 50+ miles a week (I rode 65 last week).  If I actually manage to ride to work each day (for a total of 32 miles), that plus the long ride means I've pretty much met the mileage goal (Andrew is in a very similar situation with his daily commute about a half mile longer than mine).