What was meant to be a long ride was cut short by my forgetting my helmet. So I just stopped at clicquot and got a muffin & some iced coffee. Yum. I should forget my helmet more often.
I’m planning a fun little tour of Minneapolis and this route is most of the tour’s first stage. I wanted to give it a quick ride to see if the rout was as I remembered it. It was. Hooray.
July 23rd, 2008 / Tags: bike, ride journal / TrackbackI didn’t keep track of the route on Sunday, but it was similar to Monday’s, just longer and more meandering.
Weekends mean long rides! Or they would, if my bike and the weather would cooperate. Saturday was largely rained out, and my second ride on Sunday was cut short by a flat. I have now bought a travel-sized pump and a patch kit, so the mid-ride flat shouldn’t be a show-stopper in the future.
Also on Sunday my wife and I rode around Longfellow and Seward on our way to Birchwood, where we watched Cadel Evans lose the yellow jersey. Quite the crowd taking advantage of Birchwood’s great food and giant tv, with many folks in Birchwood Race Team jerseys.
Monday’s ride was just a quick chore run. Hit the library, hit The Hub, get some lunch, head home. Nothing fancy, but at least neither of my tires exploded.
The new issue of Momentum is out. Give it a look. Momentum is a bike magazine that I really love. They aren’t gear fetishists, aesthete snobs or X-treme mountain riders. They just love bikes and the people that ride them.
Monday’s Second Route (5.3)
I threw an afternoon ride in there as well. In the 15 years I’ve lived in this state, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Minnehaha Falls. Weird.
July 21st, 2008 / Tags: bike, ride journal / TrackbackNothing 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)