42 days - 1st open road trip

Today I rode from Elgin, TX to Taylor, TX, a distance of about 15 miles, my first time on the "open road". This was an interesting ride for many reasons.

One, as we drove from Taylor to Elgin, checking to make sure there were safe enough side-shoulders to ride on, I couldn't help but notice we were going downhill, pretty much all the way. It did not occur to me until I got on the bike, that I would therefore be going uphill the whole way back. Painful error.

Two, no matter how hard the hills got, I seemed to be able to reach down and get new energy to power up the hills and keep going, so I was very happy about that. I certainly learned a lot about how my machine (my body) works, and learned the benefits of better pedaling, "clipped in".

Three, the use of a heart meter is invaulable in this exercise. I could tell when I hit the 170's (very near my max) that I was pushing the limits, and that it would take about 3-5 minutes to get back to a regular rhythm again. I generally stayed around heart rate 140-160 and about 15 MPH. The cadence meter went in and out and finally failed. When it worked, I was turning over mid to high 80's. Might have been a bit much. Really have to figure that meter out.

Four, the wind was in my face the whole way. Figures. But again, I survived it, so confidence is higher.

Five, I fell "clipped in" at the end. How embarrassing. The worst part, I had unclipped both feet, but somehow, unbelievably, when I put down my left foot towards the ground, my shoe caught the pedal and clipped back in! Honest! So I got a goodly bunch of gravel embedded in the skin of my left leg, which leads me to:

Six, I have finally shaved my legs for riding. I asked another rider why cyclers did this, and he told me "it's for when you crash - you can't treat any kind of road scrape until you shave the hair off, so you may as well do it before it happens - oh and by the way, it's gonna happen." Naturally, I thought it wouldn't happen to me. WRONG!

And Seven, the neatest thing about this ride, since it was my first on the open road, was my friend Kim driving behind me providing cover from the traffic. That helped incredibly, as it put my mind much more at ease. I was able to concentrate on learning about the bike, my meters, and myself. Very cool, thanks Kim!

So I can conclude from today, I have a much better idea of what it will take to do 150 miles in two days. It will not be easy, as it is all uphill from Houston to Austin. However, it's just 10 of the rides I just did, over two days. If I keep up a good training pace between now and then, I feel I can do it with no trouble. Tomorrow, if it doesn't rain, I will be doing a 32 mile ride in the same area with the Austin Cycling Association. I will learn how well I recover from day to day. Gotta work out "the machine" to find out more about how it works!

Oh yeah, and the other interesting thing about the ride? Smelling the farm animals and road-kill-skunks for an hour straight. Pheeeeeeewwwwww.

Cheers boys. Chin up and take care, you have done well to support your mom.