Sunday, April 19, 2009

16 mile bike ride - 4/19

This past week has been slow for exercise due to my being sick. I was supposed to do an 11 mile run last weekend, but saturday morning I was showing signs of a sore throat. I didn't have a chance to do the run on Saturday, so I thought I might be able to get it in on Sunday. However, by that time I knew I was sick - so I opted to skip the exercise and try and concentrate on staying warm and not putting additional stress on my body.

I was hoping that whatever I had would go away in a few days. Unfortunately, symptoms lasted for the better part of a week. This morning was the first where I woke up and didn't have a pretty bad sore throat. My clue that I was getting over whatever I had was yesterday, when I woke up with a sore throat, but which got better throughout the day.

So anyway - today was also a nice enough day that I could finally go for that elusive first bike ride of the season. There were a few reasons I had been pining for a bike ride. First was that I had recently gotten clipless pedals, and I wanted some real life practice is using them, as I've never used that type of show/pedal system before. I had been waiting for a relatively light traffic day to do so, so that the pressure to get moving at intersections would be a bit lower. Basically I just needed to start building my confidence at using them. The other reason I needed to go for a ride relatively soon is because of the sprint triathlon coming up - I hadn't biked all year and I needed to do at least something.

So I did a relatively short stint - halfway to work and back. It included a couple different types of intersections - some I was able to clip out, wait my turn, and clip back in in due time with no issues - other intersections I ended up clipping out of both sides and walking the bike a bit. One thing is for certain, though - its a good thing the cleats on the shoes are replaceable - because there's a good chance I'll be wearing through this original set relatively quickly.

Total Distance: 15.7 miles
Total Time: 1:02:15
Avg HR: 156 (doesn't include the first 12 minutes or so, as I had forgotten to start the HR monitor right away)

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