My Most Recent Ride 2013 (Part VI in a series)

Nope. When I exercise inside I have a weight machine and a treadmill. Use different muscle groups. I WALK on the treadmill FYI. (In my younger days I used to jog.)

 

All weather bike/trike

My average is 10 miles a day. Through all December's rain and cold, I have missed one or two days and that not because of weather. Moving, for me, is medicine. Most rides with the group are over 15 miles. When not with the group, I ride the trail out and back for 8-10 miles. I keep an eye on the Knoxville area radar which includes Greene County. That way, I get rides in between rain/showers. This don't take no engine-ear or math major. Ten mile average is a whopping 3650 miles a year. One of my ideas for the 2014 new year is to simply record all miles. I've not done that since 2006 when I did 3100 miles. I'm having more fun now than then and looks like more miles. We'll see.

 

what this crap about younger days??? HA! with the way you chase "wabbits" you could sure fool me.

 

I realize the weather is not great over there for riding.
I had to get some miles in today - wasnt great here today either 38 degrees.
- does that sound familiar ?
I should mention that 38 celsius is 100.4 Deg Fahrenheit .
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I was spraying water over myself - lucky there was some wind.......couldnt really go that far today.
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Could have been worse, the forecast was for 41 C [ 105 Far ] , the extra, hot wind, must have cooled it a bit.

 

Last day of work for the year, thought I would try a different way home.
Looked on Google and saw a fairly long bikeway running along what I thought was the Water Pipeline. Runs from Prospect Dam to Holroyd in Western Sydney.
Turns out it is a fairly new bike path run where a filled in Via Duct was.
It is Awesome.!
I must get pics to share with you all.
It runs across suburbs as an elevated track, nice and level [ thats the beauty of following a water course ]. Then every so often dipping down to duck under roadways. Lots of trees and shrubs, many birds, a most enjoyable ride.
See if map link works :
https://maps.google.com.au/maps?dad...1929&gl=au&dirflg=b&mra=ltm&t=m&z=14&lci=bike
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Its the longer of the two , and it runs in a diagonal across page fashion..

 

I looked at your map and am totally blow away by the sheer numbers and miles/km of cycleways! Jeez, they're everywhere. And not just in Sydney. Melbourne, Canberra, Newcastle: they (at least on the map) appear to be gold mines of cycleways. My personal bucket list item is to visit all our national parks here in the USA. May expand that to NP in other countries. Looks like you've got scads of them close by. Had a trip Down Under scheduled several years ago to attend the Australian Open and see the country & New Zealand for a few weeks. Didn't work out at the last minute so still on my list. The Open starts soon. So what's the early summer like there now (did I get the season correct?)?

 

We had a heat wave just before Christmas but after that it has been Superb.
Our Summer starts December.
I went for ride today - boxing day- and it was approx 25 deg C [ 77 Far ]
I would have riden further but The Christmas Dr WHO special is on soon, and I wanted to be ready for it
Dr WHO is a TV show [ well more than just a tv show....... ]

 

Glad to see people getting out!

I actually managed to do so myself today!

While we've probably not set record highs for the month, it wouldn't surprise me if this has been the warmest AVERAGE December ever. When we have had freezes, it's been like 30 F, not the 20 F or less we usually get. We've had maybe 3 days where there was snow on the ground. One day a couple weeks ago, it climbed to 53 F! Crazy for this time of year in this part of the world.

It would be perfect for grinding miles under my tires with no worry about studs or freezing gears except for the near constant rain. I will ride in rain, but it has to be 60 F or warmer unless it catches me while I'm out.

So, today I woke to 38 F and it appeared to be clear skies at sunrise. I threw myself into gear , deciding on a place to ride. Things came to a bit of a screeching halt when I couldn't find my trusty bullet-proof thermals. I ended up tearing the apartment to pieces and putting it back together in my search. There's less than 600 sq ft in this place. Where on earth could anything bigger than a loaf of bread hide??

By the time I gave up looking for them, it was too late to go as the SUN sets at around 3:40 pm right now. So, I settled on a river loop (again ) with Loke for 4.67 miles. He only limped a bit and then just the usual arthritis in the hind end. Front feet held up fine.

That leaves me with 973 miles for the year and a contentedly snoozing puppy who was a PITA before the run.

More rain forecasted, but tentative hints of a sunny Monday. Jens might work from home so I already asked if can snatch the car to do the ride I had planned for today. I desperately want work in a non-river loop ride before the year's end! 75-80% of the rides this year have been plodding around that cursed loop!

Oh, in other news there's been some sad news from Loke's 'first human mommy' who, with her husband, ran the kennels where the furball was born. Her husband passed away Christmas Eve. We'd visited them just this year and he seemed well. The news caught me hard and I had to have a good cry though I barely knew the man as all communication has gone through Kirsten. I think it was because of the other people I've known who have passed at this time of the year.

Any way. That's all my 'I got to ride babble' with a bit extra thrown in.

Terii

 

FINALLY got out to ride. Not much. 16.8 miles but i made it to 1,800 miles this years. Not my best, but I will take it.

I want to congratulate AD for starting from nothing this summer and passing me with 4 miles to spare. Well done AD!!!

 

Wow! Good job indeed.

 

Managed to get out the door for a ride!

Since it was pitch black when I went out to the gym at 6 am, I couldn't tell that the skies were clear. If I'd known that was the case, I would have skipped the vigorous leg workout I inflicted on myself.

About 8:30 am, I could finally see that it was going to be a beautiful day. Those have been as rare as snow this winter. The temp was about 35 F, so I waited a bit. The temp didn't go up much which threw me into action to find those tights. About an hour later, I tromped into the basement for one last ditch effort. Opened the door to our storage space and there they were. Sitting right on top of an Ikea bag full of Jens' fishing stuff.

I clicked shoes to pedals around 11 am. Loke was off like a shot for the first mile, but by mile 2.5 or so, he started to limp pretty badly. Got him home, dosed him with some pain meds before heading out the door again.

Too late. The workout early this morning and stopping to take care of Loke left my thigh muscles screaming. I tried, pushing on through the low angled sunlight beneath blue skies, but had to creep home with a measly total of 2.9-ish miles.

If I'd gone for a single ride with no breaks, I'm sure I could have pushed through 10 miles or more in spite of the gym this morning. Stopping for more than a few seconds and starting again just kills me in those situations.

Think the 1000 mile point is well out of reach. The rain is supposed to come back and not sure I can pound out 20 miles after having been a vegetable for so much of this winter. No one to blame but me and my unwillingness to leave a howling, distraught husky home alone.

Terii

 

I took my LoGo Lightning P-38 for an evening ride around the Fremantle Harbour including checking out the new bike path out to Rous Head (North Mole). It seems that my recumbent has developed some “Jesus” powers as it rode on water going by the map that showed up in Strava and Ride With GPS

Oh this is the magical beast by the way …



Andrew