Riding with Kim...

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Kim Lorentz was back in town after receiving her Master’s Degree.  She’d been down in Florida for the last two years, but school was behind her now.  She was only home for a week and then would be traveling to San Francisco where she would meet up with her boyfriend and continue her job search in the Bay area.  She has been running and is talking about ultra marathons – runs of fifty or more miles and something I cannot relate to – but I was riding and invited her along.

“I’m in very bad riding shape.  Florida is horrible for riding,” she said as we headed out.  She was riding a road bike, of sorts.  It was much heavier than UB Express and did not feature 700cc tires.  Her rolling speed was probably 85% of mine…a decided disadvantage, but the edge I needed to balance the fact that I was giving up 34 years in age and that only one of us had an All-American cardiovascular system.  She hung on my wheel as we pushed through the wind towards Waite Hill…a very wise thing to do when riding with someone the blocks as much wind as I do.  She stayed on my wheel except when we climbed or descended and pushed herself hard in between.  She rides with a look of grim death when she needs to work hard; a gritty determination that made her such a successful runner.  If she says she’s going to try ultramarathoning, then that means she’ll be at the front of the pack in short order.

We rode for close to two hours and with a couple of more rides, I’ll be sucking her wheel instead of the other way around.  I returned home, grabbed a towel and took my first post-workout swim of the season in my neighbor’s pool.  The water temperature was ‘shrinkage cold’, a term he used until it hit about 80 degrees.  I left my salt-stained slick on the water and exited shivering.  Ah…the joys of summer.

Bike duration:  One hour and 40 minutes.

Training Heart Rate:  120 bpm.
Calories burned during workout:  1400.