8 posts tagged “odometer”
Also, I've been memed by Richard, here's the contents of my bag (and the bag itself):
There we go, rolled over ten thousand miles on the odometer this morning. This is since May 2005, minus the winter of 2005-2006 when I rode my fixed gear for three months without the cyclocomputer on it.. So it's right about 100 commuter miles a week for two years. At an optimistic 20 miles per gallon on the Allroad, that's 500 gallons of gas I didn't burn, 11000 pounds of CO2 not added to the atmosphere. At three bucks a gallon, it's $1500 "saved" (really: redirected into bike goodies!)
It happened to roll over at a particuarly scenic spot, so I stopped and grabbed a couple of pics to "commemorate" the event.
Here's the 9000 mile shot. Bit over as I forgot to take a pic until after I'd done an extra day of commuting; I actually rolled over the 9k mark during a very nice post-work climb up Stevens Canyon / Mt Eden Road with Ben last Thursday. We had a few minor mechanical problems -- his taillight flew off during the descent and my speed sensor flipped between reading 0mph and smacking the spoke magnet on every revolution -- but it was a very nice afternoon and the ride was a nice 10 mile extension onto my normal commute.
Which, by the way, I am really settling into. It's between 18 and 20 miles each way and my routine for last week was just about perfect with a nice mix of hard and easy days and enough variety to keep it interesting. In June I burned out a bit by going for max commuting (bike both ways 4x week, Caltrain on Wednesdays). I didn't realize how fatigued I had made myself until the week after the July 4th holiday, when my first ride after four days off was 2-3 minute best over the previous PR. So the ideal week of riding, modeled after last week, would look like:
Monday: Bike in, Caltrain home
Tusday: Bike both ways, push hard on the way home - 4 long 4-5 minute intervals at 87-90% max HR
Wednesday: Rest day, ride fixie to caltrain both ways
Thursday: Train in, bike home with hill-climb/scenic detour
Friday: open, depends on how I feel
The other thing I'm working on is getting some resistance / strength training in to round out the biking. While we were in Hawaii, Makena turned me on to Kettlebell training and I've been reading up and poking around but have yet to actually do anything about it. Well, today I emailed Mark Reifkin of Girya Studio, which is right up the street from work in Palo Alto, to set up an initial appointment. We'll see how it goes, but I'm pretty excited about the prospect of taking things to the next level.
After fueling up on dates and bananas, Bjorn, Ian and I took off and got into the first real climbing of the day. Ian was getting over a bout of pneumonia (!) but, undeterred by pragmatism was riding a custom singlespeed road bike made for him by Jim Kish for one of the UBI semesters Kish teaches. Gorgeous ride, but 42x16 is tough sledding in the Santa Cruz hills even for healthy riders. I felt a bit bad about it, but I ditched my homies about five miles after the first stop and trucked onwards, solo.
Again, I'm not sure if this was a restructuring of the route but the third stop was only eight or so miles past lunch. Though the cider and blintzes at Gizditch Ranch looked appealing, I just downed a quick cup of coffee and kept rolling. Time was running short and I recalled that the big climb of the day, Mount Madonna, was between the third and fourth stop.
Except this year, there was no fourth stop, and no Mount Madonna either! The entirety of the climbing was already behind me and the rest of the ride was just a quick punch through the backroads (and, for the last five miles, the main drags) of Watsonville back to the high school. The most challenging part of the 100K ride, and my main motivation for doing it, was cut out entirely. What a letdown. I rolled into the high school, grabbed my t-shirt and met back up with Bjorn and Ian who had SAG'ed it back after lunch.
We were home by 3:30 and truly, I am looking for some different events for the rest of the season and next year because this ride went from my favorite to a big WHY BOTHER. I didn't see the route map for the 100 mile, but really it shouldn't be necessary to do the full century in order to get a good ride in, as the earlier years proved.
This was too good to let it roll by...
I recharged the battery and replaced the missing bolt with a nice long one, fastened with an airplane nut. Much bettah!
I didn't even notice until this morning, but apparently sometime last week I rolled over 6,000 miles on my bike odometer. Thought I would commemorate it with a post here as i did at 4K and 5K last year.
Had a nice evening ride today to celebrate rolling through 5,000 miles on my odometer. I stopped at the first convenient point after I passed the 5k mark, and this is what it looked like:
Overall it was a lovely afternoon and a great way to cap off a hectic week.
This pleased me greatly. Rolled over 4000 miles on my main commuter bike's odometer on the way in to work this morning. I should qualify, too, that I got the bike in May of last year and I spent most of the winter commuting on my fixie, which did not have the computer rigged on it.
