I came around a familiar blind corner to see a woman on my left & a man pushing a kid in a stroller on my right. I calmly told them I’d ride right between them but the man decided to push the stroller to his right directly into my chosen stated path. I managed to juke right (on the heavy bike with the short-bar) & avoid a pretty terrible crash guaranteed to hurt me & the kid in the stroller.

We had good weather & the later starts mean i get in a full basement workout in before riding. What I used to like most about Tuesday & Thursday rides were the slower pace & mostly gentle routes. This last quarter season I’ve switched to a tough hill-repeat buffered by mostly flat loops. I’m learning to like it just fine.

Hoping to develop a decent rhythm

Today was my first conscious try at 2000 Feet over 31 Miles and true to 2020 snafunery I both succeeded & failed. Either way my legs handled the stress & the route works very well – including the Onsighted [o sighting is actually a Rock Climbing term meaning Climbed Without Ever Having Seen It Before] Airpark Road (blissfully steep & relentless; I can’t believe I avoided it until today).

Note the fewer than 2000 feet

Note the more than 2000 feet. Since I can see the AppleWatch altimeter in real time that’s the gauge I use while riding. My disappointment came when MapMyRide denied me 250 feet

Good hard pulling. Short steep close to home – good Winter rides in my future

Today I ate correctly & had the proper amount of anti-bonk gels in my bag. To add a cherry on top Sally gave me wonderfully relentless gusts to fight with. It was the gusts which I think kept the other cyclists away. Only the right kind of nutty enjoys dying hurricane winds.

RBG’s passing takes all my attention.

I’m beginning to understand the correlation between Sprinting Gear & Heart-rate a little better now.

Sometimes I do dumb things. Today i hopped on the bike without actually eating enough first. Granted I ate my usual hard-boiled egg & yogurt, but earlier in the morning just bread & coffee. Stupid.

I planned on an easy 31 miles which would not have been debilitating but then at mile 25 I decided to go for 45, expecting my Jelly Belly Sports Beans & Bonk Blocker (one single Bonk Blocker) in my bag to get me through. Stupid.

Still, a good ride with only 2 scary parts one involving a parked car. Low Brain-Sugar can be a killer.

I’m often perplexed at my average heart-rate while on the sprinting gear but I’ll accept the results & start to push harder.

The last time a tried to take Amabo (the heavy bike) up frisbee golf hill I noticed a decided twinge in my right hip-flexor. And then I blew a tube & wrecked a tire so I sort of forgot about the cause of the tenderness & tried some weird yoga-stretches which actually work well. Today I took the same route with zero hip-flexor pain. I may have too stop mocking Yoga.

I’m reactivating the short rides again especially for Tuesdays & Thursdays to beat back the inertia which can set in after increasingly heavy workouts in the early Morning. I have little hope of hitting 5,000 miles this year but I can get in a few more at least.

I was shooting for 1,000 feet of climbing but mismanaged the route.

Trying to keep my at least once a week AirBike ride to improve my wind. I’m finding that alternating seated interval-sprints and standing interval-climbs makes a good pattern & mirrors better my regular outdoor rides. I’ll stick with 30 minute efforts for now but today my 15 minute cool-down pedaling worked very well.

It’s starting to feel Psychological that my heart works harder outside than inside

Kept things in sprint-mode today & tried harder to beat the heat with an earlier start. The humidity was in the 80%s when I left & quickly fell. I hadn’t counted on the Titans hosting a few mega-fans, who clogged my regular lanes, but once I crossed Shelby there was only the wind to negotiate with. I expected 31 miles & for once actually measured out the route perfectly but once the turn-off for home beckoned I decided to risk the Biting Flies & ride some in Shelby Bottoms. It was a good 45.

My regular 9/11 jersey

Frost of course said Nothing Gold Can Stay but Pound also said many things about Gold too. Getting the new tube (I don’t know its actual name) put into my SRAM Bottom Bracket spares me from an enormous amount of friction the previous bent tube caused so my speed is up about 3 mph & hills are again a challenge rather than a punishment. I can attribute manny things to Age & Time but I still can make the bike go when I want to. I’m hoping this will be my last half-season.

Um I mean I hope next season will be a complete season.

A good day today with some heat & some wind.

The new path to the back loop is now fully paved & a joy to ride.

I finally got around to putting the quasi-original PureFix wheels back onto Amabo for the myriad benefits which flow from 15 teeth in the back. I neglected however to recall just what the air-pressure ought to be & was let us say overly aggressive with the pump. Plus I neglected to tighten her bolts correctly so my exuberance in the hills caused the standard avoidable Fixie Skew of the rear wheel over to the left. So the friction of the tire on the frame eventually caused a blow-out & not the kind Nancy Pelosi enjoys.

Still it was a good vigorous 12 miles.

I once made a point of inspecting closely my seat height each time my mph went down for a specifically known route. Lately tho my seat height was perfect but my speed was off by 3 to 4 mph – so I attributed it to wind & extra fatigue. Turns out I had worn out the essential inner-cylinder of my bottom-bracket – I actually have been riding forcefully enough to have bent it. This increased friction was slowing me down – not that I’ve been complaining.

Still, it’s good to know the reason. My Bike Doc has a good laugh at my stubbornness.

My old Tuesday-Thursday route today in the wind.

181 on the flats with only 15 mph to show for it drove me to inspect my front crank.