Another 50 mile bike ride...

Sunday, September 26, 2010

I was bad at church...again. Not about counting my resting pulse, though I did, but the way I ate after the service. We have a little coffee hour thing and there’s always some pastry out, which I typically ignore. Not so this time. There were some brownie things with all kinds of chocolate and nuts on top and some good looking cookies. I couldn’t decide which one to take…so I took two…of each.

I needed a good workout and I knew it. It was a little cool, but I knew I had to get on the bike and ride…long. I had most of the afternoon so there was no excuse for time.

I headed for the ‘Iron Lung’ and Pekin Road. I figured a good two-hour ride was in order and was feeling pretty confident after all the hiking I’d done. My neck and shoulders had been quite sore in the weeks leading up to the Adirondacks from the riding I’d been doing, but that seemed to be gone…for now. I have check points on this course and I was hitting my fast ones through the first 30 minutes. Since I was thinking I’d turn after one hour, I wanted to push hard to that point and see how close I could come to my one hour p.r. I managed to get within a couple hundred yards of it and was feeling so good that I just kept going.

Pekin was pretty quiet…as it usually is and I was completely enjoying the ride. Normally, my shoulders and neck would be sore after 90 minutes of riding, but they weren’t. As I approached my turnaround on Butternut somewhere out near Burton, I had an Amish buggy pull out from a farm and onto the road about a hundred yards ahead of me. I didn’t know the protocol for this situation. I was moving reasonably faster than the buggy and was concerned about spooking the horse should I attempt to pass. I was almost to my turnaround and could just hang behind it…but then the horse would think that I was some kind of wimp and totally lose respect for me. I made my move and passed him by going completely to the other side of the road. I got a ‘thumbs up’ from the driver…his horse was like Secretariat or something…as I sped by.

The return trip was down right cold. My feet were beginning to freeze since I wasn’t wearing socks. It’s funny how fast you become a freeze baby in the fall. If it had been in the 50’s in April when I first started riding outside, I’d think myself blessed with a heat wave, yet here I was in early September and whining…to no one in particular…like a little girl. Damn…man up.

Anyway, I was freezing, but still riding strong. I passed the two hour mark thinking I could ride a century today. I was thinking it because I didn’t actually have the time to do it and find out that I couldn’t, so thinking it was okay and manly. I continued to feel strong right up until the last couple of miles from home…when I started to think I was happy I was about done.

I ended up riding a little over three hours and covering about 52 miles. It was a good pace and burned the calories I needed to burn for the second dessert I was going to have after dinner…peach cobbler and ice cream. I’d probably have it for breakfast tomorrow morning, as well. I digress. I do that. A lot.

Bike duration: Three hours and 10 minutes.
Training Heart Rate: 120 bpm.
Calories burned during workout: 2,800.