bikerBabe blew that out of the water with one ad.
$700 dollars off the bike I wanted was just too good a deal to pass up, the problem was it wasn't Black Friday, it was Thanksgiving and I was strolling through a park with my dad, wife and son on some sort of weird power-walk turkey trot sort of thing in a vain attempt to pay Thanksgiving dinner forward.
I was thinking about 'the hill.' Obsessing about it. I wanted to know if I could take it on the new bike I didn't yet have. I was pretty sure I could take it, but how fast? It's about eight tenths of a mile of pure pain. There are a lot of these nightmares around my fathers house, mile long thigh crushers. The major problem being they were not bike friendly, thin twisty horrors where you could get nailed by a car even if you were careful. This one looked like this:
And after you rounded the bend at the top of the above picture looked like this:
And don't let the top of the hill fool you, it goes somewhat flat and then up you go again before hitting a series of nasty rollers. To the Garmin it looked like this (shown until my dad rescued my son and I in the car):
While my son and I were trudging up the hill the Garmin was spitting out fun numbers like 24% grade but generally hung out around 17%. I have to try it this summer. So that's two little promises, this hill and a century. Weeeee!
Wednesday, before heading to my folks I was in the gym doing the interval thing. awesomeGirl and goodMood were there too but alas no IronMan. The reason I'm tossing this out in a non sequitur sort of way is because I was fairly active over this Holiday and I'll be curious about my weight on Monday. Also to let IronMan know that I've still got an eye on him.
There's no escaping IronBill's baleful glare! Do you hear me IronMan?!
Um, yeah, that should cover it.
So Black Friday rolled around and I had to get up at 4:30am to drag my son to a nearby store so that he could get this XBox he'd been wanting. He actually earned the coin for it but the place was a zoo and I thank the everlasting Lord that he didn't want a Wii, we'd still be in line. Then we headed back home so I could purchase Precious, er, the bike.
Precious is going to be something of a icon for me. It is the culmination of nearly a year's work and hopefully something I will enjoy for the next decade. I honestly can't wait until I can put some serious miles on it.
Wanna see?
By the time it was purchased and configured and all that jazz it was too late to ride, but I'm pretty proud of it and what it means to me, my current accomplishments.
Saturday rolled around and I found myself in spin class with my wife and son. I don't know why. My wife was spin curious, my daughter was not so opted for the pool and my son decided to give it a whirl. We got there about fifteen minutes before class (late) and when we got in there all the shiny new bikes were taken so we got out the old ones and set up. I could not get my bike sized correctly and that made me cranky but by the time I got the straps for the cages correct it was time to spin.
This was a markedly different course than the one I took from Bill. First I was positioned poorly, right at the focal point of the two blaring speakers emanating all sorts of spin music. The instructor opted for those McDonalds Can I Take Your Order headsets spewed a bunch of unintelligible mush from them.
"OK, I want you to muwha mus offne mumble mumble. But it's critical that you mushmouth mutter gibberish!"
Effectively it boiled down to keeping your eye on her and when she stood up, I stood up, when she pedaled fast, I pedaled fast. Towards the end of the class the music began to drive notes into my ears like railroad spikes and I ended up shoving my fingers into my ears trying to quiet things down a bit. About midway through the class my wife hopped off her bike and just left, the pansy! She went and checked on our daughter rolls eyes but came back in to finish up after her massage and latte.
It was a pretty good class, sorta. I mean I got a good workout with a maxHR of 154 (77%) and an average HR of 137 for fifty four minutes but the one thing I took away from it was:
Get to spin class early enough to get a good bike location and bike.
And then I took Precious out that afternoon for a very small jaunt, three miles. It was interesting 'clipping in' and playing around with the new shifters. It was also fairly cold.
Today (Sunday) I just had to attempt something a little more fun; however it was windy as all get out. So I bundled up and put on a windbreaker and headed out for a jaunt around a local park. The total ride was eleven and a half miles, the 7.71 was actually on the bike trail which only had three stop signs on it. There was a fair amount of pedestrians on the path but it looks like the bike has added about 2mph on what I normally do. The last time I did the park I averaged 12.7mph, this time it was 14.8.
I'm already out of shape for biking, my butt hurt and it felt like I had too much weight on my hands. Both of these issues can be solved by riding more and some tinkering. I am DYING to get out on a seriously long ride, which will be spring I guess. Until then I'm going to have to master the art of cleating in and out of the pedals. There's so much to learn - I LOVE this bike and lifestyle!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Be seeing you.
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