Nothing too exciting. I’m still working on a simple and direct route to Seward. Of course, by the time I get settled into this route, they will almost be ready to move to their new location.
I did get to give the ‘death look’ to some driver that tried to run a 4-way stop & kill me. That was fun.
Ride totals: 5.1 miles in … ? I have no idea.
July 18th, 2008 / Tags: bike, ride journal / TrackbackToday I wanted to go for a longer ride. I also wanted to finally get this bike onto the Greenway, Minneapolis’ premier bike path. Eight miles seemed like a good amount — farther than I’d gone so far, but not so far that I’d use more than my allotted hour.
Another nice thing about this route is that I got to try two more inclines, the ascents on the Martin Olav Sabo Bridge — both of which are more challenging than the hills I tried yesterday.
The ride out was smooth. Getting over the bridge was a cinch and once I hit the clear path west of Hiawatha, I really got the bike moving. If I can keep up a really quick pedaling cadence, I can get the bike to sail. Unfortunately, I can’t keep up that cadence for long. I completed the first four miles in a little under twenty minutes (roughly. I didn’t keep very close track), which would mean an average speed of about 12 miles an hour.
And on the way back I found out exactly why the first leg of the ride was so nice, I had been pushed by a strong tail wind. And now I had to pedal back home into that wind making the ride a misery. I hate headwinds. Hate. Hate them more than anything else. By the time I hit the Sabo bridge I was already exhausted. I just barely made the top of the bridge, where I had to stop and gather my breath before riding down.
I think tomorrow may be a rest day!
Ride totals: 8.2 miles in about 44 minutes (11 mph average)
July 16th, 2008 / Tags: bike, ride journal / TrackbackI had 2 goals for today’s ride. The first was see how fast I could go on my new bike, which meant that I had to find a relatively stop-sign-free stretch of road. The second goal was to see how my single-speed bike worked on a hill. This route provided everything I needed.
The stretch of road alongside the river parkway has very few stop signs and almost no traffic, excellent location for a speed test. Before I exhausted myself in the heat, I was probably going 15-20 miles an hour, which is perfect for my needs. And I’d guess that I wasn’t close to the bike’s top speed. With some practice, and a cooler day, I can certainly go faster.
The hill I wanted to try is from the river road up to about 40th avenue along 33rd street. It’s no monster climb, but it served as a good first test of my bike’s abilities. I intentionally geared the bike a bit low in order to make hills slightly easier, and it seems to have worked. The climb proved no trouble at all. I didn’t even have to leave the saddle.
Length: 3.6 miles
Time: ~20 minutes (I don’t keep very close track of the time)
Even though I finished my new bike a couple of weeks ago, I really haven’t had a chance to take it out for a ride of any length. My first two test rides wrenched my back and butt muscles something fierce, to the point where my doctor prescribed both muscle relaxants and 8 Advil a day. As my muscles recovered, I went out of town for a week. So yesterday afternoon was my first ride longer than 2 blocks.
Now that I have the bike fitted more appropriately, my muscles haven’t been complaining…much. I rode about 3 miles yesterday and 5 miles today, and I’m still able to walk. So at least things are going much better than my first rides.
I’m slowly learning how to ride this bike. So much is different from my last few rides. One gear instead of 27, drop handlebars, peddle straps, larger-but-thinner wheels, etc. The biggest change has to be the peddle straps. I’ve never ridden with any sort of foot restraint system; so I find myself paying a lot of attention to my feet, giving myself a lot of time to detach a foot from the pedals when I come to a stop.
Learning about the pedals ties in strongly with the other skill I’m working on: starting and stopping correctly. Other than the time I nearly got myself run over (totally my fault), I’ve gotten much better at this skill.
Ride One:
Just a quick tour of the neighborhood and a visit to The Hub and my library. At The Hub I decided to invest in a rear rack and pannier. A lot of my bike rides will be to do chores around town, so I needed a place to store crap. And I’ve found that my messenger bag isn’t all that comfortable on this bike. Also, wearing a backpack while biking in the summer? Sweaty.
Of course, the new rack did not agree with my older frame. But with a bit of ingenuity, an adaptor kit and $2 of bolts from Ace Hardware, it was good to go. So nice!
Ride Two:
Now that I had a pannier, I had to put it to use. I needed some brown sugar in order to make cookies, so I biked up to Seward and back, making a quick stop at Clicquot for some refreshing lemonade.
Over this ride’s five miles I averaged about ten miles an hour, which I think will be pretty close to my average on residential roads. Too many stop signs make it hard to go much faster. I’m not a biker that’s dead-set on obeying all the same traffic rules as cars, but I am dead-set against being run over. So I tend to at least slow down at every stop sign.
July 14th, 2008 / Tags: bike, ride journal / Trackback