Slow Tempo Saturday

My wife and I did a nice, slow bike ride through a local park today. It was 13 miles round trip on a beautiful day with lots of dawdling and poking about.

I even took my coffee thermos and saw many interesting things like a doggie drinking fountain.

It was fun, but a doggie drinking fountain? ::rolls eyes::

Then I mowed the lawn and napped - I had a rough night sleeping on Friday. A neighbor stopped by with a Kevin Costner movie called American Flyers, I hope to watch it Sunday evening. He suggested that we go do the same course my wife and I did this morning later in the evening but at a more challenging pace.

I'm apprehensive and trying not to show it - this would be the first time I ever rode with someone at (for me) a workout pace. I don't want him bored and begin babbling my stats, how I'm trying to figure out how to hold 18mph longer than two minutes all the while thinking there are curves on this course I have yet to attempt at such a speed. In effect trying to let him know that I might blow at this.

He shows up around 7pm and we're off after I get my Garmin, I'm curious about the length of the loop (it's 2.25 miles) in case I want to work up my distance on it before trying one of goFast's horrendous 25 milers. I'm thinking first distance, then speed but I'm boxed in by age - if I'm too cautious I'll never know what I could have done.

Periodically my neighbor would say, "Wanna take it up a notch?" making me smile in remembrance of that Nazi spin class teacher (Turn it UP!).

Sure.

We'd hang in the 18mph range for a bit but this course has some fairly serious curves and occasional pedestrians so it's hard to maintain. He likes to spot deer along the path but we didn't see any on this ride.

I nearly caused us to wreck on the way back. That was fun. We're going through a neighborhood and pass a zero-turn lawnmower up on some trailer. I begin rambling about how I could cut my lawn in four minutes... just gab gab gabbing away...

"BILL!"

My neighbor who could care less about my hypothetical lawn cutting time on a zero-turn had started a right hand turn in front of me because he wanted to get home or something. He's right next to me, like we'd done time in prison or something. I lean hard to the right away from him already screaming, "Sorry, sorry, my bad!" while he goes left.

He kept his distance after that. Zero turns will be the death of me I bet.

The overall route had me working at about 64% maxHR for about fifty minutes, the long straight away had me at 68% maxHR for about ten minutes.

All in all not a bad workout for me.

He wants to do a 18 miler Sunday but I'm not so sure. I might have to defer to next weekend since I have a date in the gym on Monday and I'm suppose to take a day off for recovery.

I'm noticing my hands don't hurt so much and my lower back isn't as sore as it once was - hey, maybe I'm getting better!