I just want to say how happy I am that the weather has warmed up enough to bike outside.  I do not miss the trainer at all.  So far, I have done 3 outside rides and loved each one of them.  And to make things even better, the 10-day forecast has temperatures in the 40’s with Monday topping out at 50.  I see lots of biking in the near future!

Old Man Winter, I would formally like to give you a swift kick in the ass and a hearty “Goodbye”.

I had a bit of an interesting experience on the trainer today.  I had to remount my bike in the trainer after my ride outside last Thursday.  I tightened the resistance screw on the trainer and hopped on.  As soon as I started pedaling, I knew that I tightened the screw more than usual.  I figured that this would do me some good because I was going to have to push harder than normal.

After a couple minutes though, I noticed a funky smell.  And no, it wasn’t me.  I stopped and found that my rear tire was really hot.  I realized that I was literally burning rubber.  Whoops!

I loosened up the resistance a bit to where it normally is and finished up my ride.

I did 70 minutes with 9×1min at Z5 with 2 min active recovery between intervals.  It was a great workout and I really felt like I was pushing it hard on my intervals.

Now, it is time to continue watching The Office and hopefully doing a bit of stretching and core workout.

At least it sure felt like it today.  We had sunny blue skies all day long with temperatures creeping up into the upper 30’s.  I decided to take advantage of the great weather and did an outdoor bike ride; my first since December 2nd.  I had a relatively light work morning so I decided to take off early and head to Grand Haven to meet Jennie when she got out of work.

I knew going into the ride that the wind was out of the NW – the direction I was headed.  Nevertheless, I decided to stick to my plan and head into the wind.  I figured that it would be a good mental workout as well as a physical one. 

It was an absolutely brutal ride.  I’ve done it dozens of times before, but this was by far the hardest.  The first half is rolling hills with a couple of big climbs. The wind wasn’t too bad at this point because the roads were lined with trees and/or houses which helped block it.  However, the 2nd half of the route is through farmland where it is completely flat with nothing to block the wind.  There were times when it felt like I wasn’t even moving.  I almost wish that I had been doing an out and back, rather than stopping at Jennie’s work so that I could have taken advantage of the tail wind (like Lance and Chris did in Hawaii).  Oh well, I still wouldn’t have averaged 56kmph.

Despite the wind, I managed to stay fairly warm.  My feet, which are normally the first to get cold, stayed nice and toasty thanks to my Specialized neoprene shoe covers.  I also had on my bike shorts with tights over them, a long sleeve compression shirt with a bike jersey over it, a balaclava, and gloves.  My hands and forearms did get pretty cold near the end of the ride, but stayed warm much longer than I thought I would.

When I finished, I grabbed this screenshot from my iPhone of the weather conditions.  If it wasn’t for that damn wind, it would have been perfect weather.

My time and pace for the ride was horrible compared to my previous rides.  It took me 2:20:03 to go 36.24 miles (15.5 mph pace).  Compare this with the last time I rode this route in October when it only too 1:47:27 for a 20.2mph pace.  Like I said, the wind was brutal.

After the ride, I rode home with Jennie and we got Big Bob’s pizza for dinner; the perfect fuel after a long ride.  I decided to skip my 4 mile run today figuring that the ride more than made up for it.  Now, it is time to get a bit more work done before I fall asleep at my desk.

No, seriously, I can’t see you.  Put on a damn light.  I can’t believe how many people were out tonight without any lights.  I headed out on my bike ride at about 4:00, bringing along my front and back lights because I knew the sun would be setting shortly.  Sure enough, I ended up finishing my ride in the dark around 5:30.  In the final half hour, it was pretty close to pitch black.  I bet I saw at least 20 people without any lighting what so ever.  Come on! At least carry a flash light.  Oh.  And by the way, that tiny patch of reflective material on most running shoes is not enough to make yourself visible.  Are you trying to get run over?!?!?

Ok.  I am done ranting.

If you are looking for some stuff brighten up your night runs I love my Brooks Nightlife Hat that is reflective and has a blinking red light in the back.  I usually will couple that with Petzl Tikka Plus Headlamp so that I can see where I am going and so that cars can see me coming.

And finally, I have been playing around with Flickr’s ability to add notes to pictures and have spiced up the My Equipment page of my blog.  Check it out!

After overindulging on turkey (and subsequently passing out in front of the fire), I decided that I should go for a bike ride on Friday.  As luck would have it, Friday turned out to be one of the coldest days of the season.  Our unseasonably warm weather appears to be behind us.  I knew that the weather was going to be a bit colder and had packed my cold weather gear.

Passed out in front of the fire… too much turkey!

I started my ride headed west into the wind.  My goal was to ride the Orchard Trail, which started about 9 miles away from the in-law’s house.  This was the most difficult part of the ride.  Not only was it directly into a frigid headwind, but it was entirely on surface streets, most of which were not suitable for bike traffic.  Some of them were busy two lane roads with 50 mph speed limits (closer to 60 mph actual speeds though) with absolutely no paved shoulder.  The frustrating thing was that there was plenty of room where there could be a paved shoulder, but instead it was just gravel.

To give you a sense of the wind, the first 9 miles was into a direct headwind and the last nine was a direct tailwind.

By the time I actually got to the trail, my feet were absolutely freezing.  I pushed forward and after 2 miles on the trail, I passed a bike shop.  I decided to stop and see what they had in the way of shoe covers.  I ended up buying a pair of Specialized Neoprene Shoe Covers.  As soon as I put them on, there was a noticeable difference.  They were a lifesaver.  Had I not bought them, I probably would have turned around there rather than adding on a few more miles.  The only downside was that I didn’t have them at the start of the ride so my feet were already cold when I put them on.  They kept my feet from getting any colder and even warmed them up a bit.  I’ll have to give them a try start to finish next week to see how well they work at keeping my feet warm to begin with.

The return trip of this ride was glorious.  I knew that I would have a tailwind nearly the entire way and it would be mainly downhill.  Knowing this was one of my motivations to keep heading out further on the first leg of the ride.  The longer I suffered on the hard part, the more I would get to enjoy on the easy part.

I flew back to the house on the return, making the wind all worth it.  In the end, it was a 35.8 mile ride in 2:05:39 (17.1 mph).  My splits were 1:10:00 for the first half and 55:38 for the second; 4 mph faster on the way home.  All in all, I think it was a good way to burn off all of the excess eating.