So I’ve had a bit more of a shift in how I see myself now when it comes to cycling.  For a very long time now, I’ve always seemed cycling as something separate from what I would normally do.  Even though I’ve been working hard to see myself as a cyclist, I’ve always looked at it as either good exercise or a fun thing to do.  Recently, I’ve started seeing cycling as a more integral part of my life.  I commute on my bike; I socialize on my bike.  The days of long lone rides seems to be over.  Now when I ride, I do it for a reason.  This is quite comforting to me.

I know that today is Thursday.  The weather was looking iffy and I was running late today so I didn’t make it to tonight’s group ride.  I figured I’d tell you about Tuesday’s ride instead.

I was also running a bit behind schedule on Tuesday so I really had to book it to make it to the start of the ride on time.  As soon as I made it into the parking lot, the group started out.  We were heading out to the Waterworks and then doing Schwartz hill.  We were really cruising on the way out to the Waterworks.  For the 7.5 miles out there, we averaged about 17.5mph.  That is absolutely blistering compared to what I normally do.  My normal average speed for just about any ride in Bloomington is somewhere between 13 and 14mph.  As soon as we got out there EVERYONE went down to the boat launch.  I succumbed to peer pressure and went down as well.  Once we all got down there, Alan took a picture of us all standing in front of the lake then we started the 6.5% climb for half a mile.  It wasn’t absolutely horrible, but it certainly wasn’t a joy.

I figured that I was then going to be shot for the rest of the ride.  That’s usually what happens on these Tuesday/Thursday rides;  I’ll be keeping up fine until we come up to the first big hill, then I’ll lose it and have to limp back home.  Well, surprisingly enough, that did not happen today.  The next 5 miles after the hill we averaged 16mph and I wasn’t feeling bad at all.

Then we had a nice long downhill which meant that a big climb was coming up again.  This was Schwartz hill.  It averaged 8.5% for half a mile.  At the very start of the climb I was directly behind Alan.  He dropped down to his inner chainring (he has a triple) and just slowly started making his way.  Instead of just pushing until I couldn’t push any more, like usual, I stuck behind him for the first couple hundred yards which was the steepest part.  While I was going slower than I normally did, I was apparently saving myself for later.  I then made it up the rest of the hill with no problem and caught up to the group.  For the first time this year, I was NOT the last person to catch up to the group after a long climb.  It felt pretty awesome.

After that the ride was pretty uneventful.  We just rode back into town with no more big hills or anything.  Overall, my final average speed was 15.4mph.  This is by far the fast average speed I’ve had in Bloomington on any ride over 2 miles.  I felt quite accomplished after this ride was done.

So I was rather looking forward to today to see if I could do a repeat performance, but it wasn’t to be I suppose.  Today was interesting in its own right though;  I got a couple new things for the bike.  I went to Revolution Bike and Bean and picked up a Specialized Toupé.  This is a ‘real’ saddle.  I’ve only ridden it about 10 miles since I’ve gotten it, but it feels much more comfortable than even my broken-in old saddle.  I’m quite excited to see how this saddle turns out.  I also ordered and picked up a 12-27 cassette to replace my 12-25 that I used to have.  I figure that the extra couple teeth can really come in handy on those steep hills during the Hilly Hundred.  Hopefully next week the weather and my schedule cooperate and I can try out this fancy new equipment.

So as you may have noticed, I stopped updating this thing.  The main reason was that I wasn’t progressing like I wanted and was getting quite discouraged.  This isn’t a rare thing for me;  the same thing happened last year.  I start out the summer with tons of ambition but then usually fall short within a month or two.  I’ve come to a bit of a realization though in that I can be completely happy without constantly trying to set personal bests or pusing myself super hard.

Over the past couple weeks, I’ve only gone on group rides or commutes.  I did manage to find an awesome group that rides just a hair faster than I do on Tuesdays and Thursdays so they present a good challenge and also keep me on the bike 3 times a week now along with the Sunday Nice N Easy ride.  With commuting this puts me up to about 70 miles a week.

I really feel like this sort of schedule is working for me.  I don’t lose entire days like I used to and I also don’t get discouraged when I’m not constantly pushing myself for more, more, more.  I’ve been doing it for four weeks now and I’m hoping that I can keep this up until the rides stop at the end of October.  That should put me in great form for the Hilly Hundred which is at the end of October.  Of course, if I don’t feel like I’m ready, then I’m not going to feel horrible if I don’t do it.

So, on to today’s ride.  Today’s ride was great.  Both Tom and Matt were there which meant that they went off the front so I had someone to chase.  For some reason, I was feeling incredibly strong so I went with them.  It was exciting to be pushing that hard.  We stopped at the turnaround point for about 20-25 minutes, which probably wasn’t the best thing since I didn’t really get a chance to warm up again.  On Bottom Road, Tom took off again and no one was going to catch him.  I figured I’d have a bit of fun and tried to catch up.  I kept up 26mph for 2 minutes, but then had to drop back down to 20mph since I had pegged my HR.  Eventually I caught up with him and we both slowed down to about 15mph.  The whole reason he went off was just to see who would come with him and to just get his HR up.  I’m glad he didn’t keep pushing once I caught him since I wouldn’t have been able to keep up for much longer.  About half a mile after I caught him we came upon a series of three hills.  They killed me.  But we all rested for a couple minutes at the top so I recovered pretty well.  After that it was a pretty uneventful ride back.  I did my best to stay up front and keep up with Tom.

Overall, I’m very happy with myself after this ride.  I’ve gotten much stronger over the past month or so and it is really starting to show.  When I first started getting back into these Sunday rides, I was consistently one of the slowest ones.  Now I’m to the point where I am quite sure that I am actually one of the fastest.  I’m still the slowest on the Tuesday/Thursday rides, but I am getting stronger and hopefully I’ll be able to keep up with the middle of the pack pretty soon.  If not, then there is always next season.

I am finally becoming a real cyclist and getting much stronger.  I really love this feeling of accomplishment.

My research is starting to consist of running programs that I’ve written for hours on end so I’ve found myself with a bit of downtime.  Today while I was waiting for a task to complete, I started looking up local rides that I could go to.  One thing led to another and next thing you know, I’m at the Randonneurs USA website. I spent a good hour or so just looking at all the different rides offered across the country.  If I have the time, I would love to try a brevet series next year.

Anyways, all that looking at cycling stuff on the internet got me quite motivated today.  So once I was done at work, I headed home, geared up and headed out on my bike.  I have this one route that I normally do with a couple variations and today I did it backwards since I’m thinking that this may be my new ‘long way to work’ route.

After talking with a couple of people and reflecting on my previous rides, I decided to try to put in very little effort at the beginning of this ride since usually I peg my heart rate at the beginning and drain all my energy.  I was going to try something different today.  I tried my best to ride as light as possible and keep my heart rate a good deal below my anaerobic threshold.  That worked for the most part, but I had to go a bit over a couple times on some hills.  However, that’s to be expected.

When I take this route the normal direction, there is about a mile stretch of road that has a gradient of anywhere from 3% to 7%.  This time I was going the other direction, so that meant that I had a great descent coming up.  This is when the first strange part of the ride happened.  Instead of lightly pedaling at the top of the hill then just coasting while tucked in the aerobars like I normally do, I decided to push the entire way down the hill.  I didn’t go all out or anything, just a moderate effort on my largest gear ratio (50/11).  Well, at the bottom of the hill, I hit a speed of 43.49mph.  This is the second fastest I’ve gone since I’ve had my Garmin.  My top speed is 44.96 on a different hill, but in the same area.  When I went 44.96, I was absolutely terrified.  I thought I was going to crash.  In fact, I tried to go into the aerobars, but just couldn’t because I didnt want to be away from the brakes.  This time, I went ~1.5mph slower, but I was pushing the whole time and also in the aerobars the whole time too.  I also wasn’t scared at all.  In fact, I wished that I was on my TT bike so I had a bigger gear to turn!  It was quite the strange feeling going that fast (for me) and still wanting more.

Well, after the big downhill, I’m sure you can guess what came next.  That’s right: a nice big uphill.  This wasn’t nearly as steep.  But it was nearly 4 miles long.  This is the type of hill that I normally dislike.  It starts of rather shallow and then gets steeper and steeper as it goes on.  By the end, the gradient was just north of 5%.  This is when the second strange part of my ride occured.  To be honest, I was getting quite tired of this hill, and I just wanted it to be over.  So I did what anyone else would do with the same thought process;  I upshifted and got out of the saddle.  Now, normally I can’t be out of the saddle for very long on an uphill because my heart rate shoots through the roof and I’m very quickly drained of energy.  This time, I got out of the saddle a little earlier than I normally would, but I was quite determined to make it over the top.  And make it over the top without sitting I did.  The strange part wasn’t that.  The strange part was that my heart rate at the top of the hill was 197.  Now, this probably means nothing to you at all, but let me put it in some perspective.  The highest I’ve ever seen my heart rate (with any cycling computer I’ve had) is 190.  To see it at 190 is quite rare in fact.  What I normally consider to be my ‘max’ HR is 185.  Once my HR hits 185, it’s quitting time for that push.  Hopefully now it’s clear how ludicrous 197 is.  The strangest part about it was that I wasn’t completely drained of energy.  I was tired of course, but usually once my HR hits 185, I have to just about stop pedaling.  I had to decrease my output, as is expected, but I could still pedal at a somewhat normal pace.

At this point, my route took me back through town and was rather uneventful.  The whole time I was thinking about my heart rate though.  As I got within about a mile of my apartment the third, and final, strange part of the ride occured.  Since I had spent the last 5 or so miles thinking about my new super max HR, I was a bit motivated it seems.  There are some small rolling hills on the approach to my apartment complex that I normally drop down and slowly pedal over.  For some reason, I was possessed and decided to upshift once again and get out of the saddle.  My heart rate never went quite as high since these hills where shorter and less intense; although, it did hit 190 on one of the hills.  It was still quite abnormal for me to push myself so much, especially at the end of a ride.  It was also quite abnormal in that I once again wasn’t completely drained like I normally am whenever I get my heart rate up like that.

So I guess there are a couple reasons such strange things happened on today’s ride.  It might simply have been that I was feeling extra motivated and really on top of my game today and pushed myself harder than I ever had before.

I don’t think that’s what happened though.  Now, this is going to sound silly.  I think that today was the first day in a little over a year of riding that I realized that full benefit of warming up before a ride.  Like I said before, normally I push from the start and find myself quickly drained and then just put in the minimum amount of effort to complete the ride.

If this in fact was me seeing the benefits of warming up, it’ll be quite the great thing.  It seems that I had reached some sort of plateau in my training.  My mileage wasn’t going up a ton, and neither was my speed.  Here’s hoping that I just started my next great leap forward in my cycling.

So to ‘celebrate’ the 4th of July, I decided to go on my longest bike ride ever.  I was really feeling up for a good long ride, and I had the day off, so I figured ‘why not?’

The ride started in the Wal-Mart parking lot in Columbus, IN.  Let me point out here that this was the first time I have ever done a solo ride that did not start either at my apartment or at my office.  I actually drove somewhere to start this ride.  The main reason for that was that I wanted a nice long and flat route.  Unfortunately, flat routes don’t exist near me.  So, I packed up my bike and gear and headed east.  After reassembling my bike and getting my shoes and gloves and such on, I started out on the road.  It was about 3pm.  The forecast wasn’t great for that day, but there was supposed to be no rain in Columbus after 3pm.  As I started out, there were very thick clouds overhead, but they were keeping their moisture to themselves.

Since I’m not that great at planning routes in areas I don’t know very well, I stuck to main roads.  I’ve run into the issue in Bloomington before where I’ll plan a nice route only to find out that one of the roads I’ve never seen before turns out to be an unpaved road.  That is quite annoying.  So I figured if it was a yellow colored road on Google Maps then it must certainly be paved.  That reasoning hasn’t failed me yet.  One benefit of following such main roads is that there are generally less turns, and that means less places to get lost.  Of course, keeping track of things like distance and time get rather difficult without constantly checking your cycling computer.  As it happens, I missed the very first turn I was supposed to take after I left the Wal-Mart parking lot and got on my first ‘yellow’ road.  For some reason I expected these main roads to somehow look different than the regular ‘white’ roads from Google Maps.  That is not always true.  About half a mile after where I was supposed to turn, I got to thinking that I might have already missed a turn.  I stopped, and checked my hand-made cue sheet.  Yup, I had missed a turn.  Oh well, all that meant was that my longest ride was going to be a mile longer.

It was about that time that the rain started.  Yes, the rain that wasn’t supposed to be there.  Normally, I detest the rain.  If it even looks like it’s going to rain, I usually won’t go out.  I didn’t have much of an option in this case however, so I just had to deal with it.  To be honest, it wasn’t all that bad.  Sure, I got all wet and had to wipe my glasses rather often, but it wasn’t as horrible as I usually expect riding in the rain to be.  That being said, I still don’t like riding in the rain and will most likely continue to avoid it.  Thankfully the rain only lasted about 20 minutes and didn’t make another appearance for the rest of the ride.

After my first hour on the road I decided to stop for my first break. My plan was to stop just about every hour for 5-10 minutes for a quick rest, and a bite of a Clif Bar and then keep on going.  My first ‘rest stop’ had me stopped on a relatively quiet road at a stream crossing so there was a guard rail to sit on.  It still amazes me how quiet things can be when there are no people around.  I was by far the loudest thing on this road, except for the few cars that would pass.  Such quiet gives you lots of time to reflect on various things.  That’s usually a good thing, but about 5 miles after my rest stop, I remembered that it can also be a bad thing to have so much ‘me’ time.

Usually, after about 20 or so miles, I inexplicably want my riding to be over NOW.  It’s not that I’m tired or anything.  I think it’s just that I’m starting to get bored.  This has been happening to me ever since the end of last season.  I think that this is also one of the main reasons that I am not out there cycling more than I am now.  It gets rather discouraging when you constantly think about ways you can cut this ride short.  This is also the main reason I didn’t ride until the end of the time limit on the Tour de Cure ride.  I knew that I wasn’t going to get to 100 miles, so I figured ‘why bother?’ and gave up.  This is something I seriously need to work on and any tips are certainly appreciated.

After a little bit more on that nice and solitary road (which was still a ‘yellow’ road, by the way) I made my next turn (successfully) onto a more major road.  This road had a great surface and a nice 2-3 foot shoulder.  I was pleased.  Pretty soon, the two hour mark came up and I stopped once again.  This time it was at the intersection of two main roads once again so I could sit on a guard rail.  They are quite comfy.

After my break was up, it was time to turn onto my next main road of my route.  Just for a reference, this was around mile 28.  This new road was a divided ‘highway.’  It was quite busy, but I had a shoulder that was the size of a car lane to deal with, so I felt rather safe.  Thankfully, most of the length of this shoulder was rather clean as well.  I’ve run across some shoulders this size that are almost unrideable because they are either poorly paved or covered with dirt and debris.  There was only a section about a quarter mile long where most of the shoulder was obscured by debris.  All in all, I was rather pleased with this portion of the road.

Then I came to mile 32.5.  This was roughly the halfway point.  It was also the point where I made another turn and started heading more or less back in the direction of Columbus.  Although this route so far had been fairly flat, there was pretty much a constant incline the entire way.  It wasn’t much of one, but my average speed at that point (13.7mph) was telling me that it was enough of an incline to affect my speed.  From this point forward everything was going to be more or less ‘downhill,’ which was a comforting thought to me.

The road that I turned down to start my return journey was much quieter than the major highway I had just left and had very few cars on it.  The surface was quite nice however, so it was smooth sailing for quite a while.  Until I hit mile 46.  This is where I made my second navigational mistake.  When I was planning my route, I thought that I had to follow this road all the way through until it hit another major artery of the area.  As it turns out, this was not completely true.  The road I was on had a three-way stop at mile 46.  I could either go right or left.  I went right.  I was supposed to go left.  After another half mile, I saw a road sign that told me that I was not on the road I wanted to be on, so I turned around.

After getting back on the correct road, I rode for another 3 miles and then made my third stop.  It was now 3:30 into my ride.  I was still feeling rather good at this point.  I may have been a bit tired, but after 49 miles, what else could be expected?  Once again, I stopped so I could sit on a guard rail.  This time it was next to a bridge over a stream.  It was obvious by looking at the surroundings that when Indiana had some flooding recently, the stream had completely covered the road.  This was no small task either, since the stream was 15-20 feet below the bottom of the bridge.

Anyways, after my rest I once again headed back out.  The only interesting thing for the next while was that I rode by a church on Locust Road with the slogan “I’m burning for you” on their board.  It made me chuckle.

As I turned onto my second to last road of my ride, I started feeling very tired.  I knew I only had about 5 more miles to go, but I just HAD to stop.  I saw a nice looking guard rail, so I stopped.  It was 4:19 into the ride and at mile 63.  After about 3 minutes of rest, I pushed on.  About half a mile after my stop I came back into the town of Columbus.  I made my final turn and headed back to my car.

When I got back to my car, I had spent a total of 4:37:25 on the bike for a grand total of 67.78 miles.  According to my wonderful data analysis program, I burned 4852 calories during the ride.  When I got back to my car, I wasn’t completely drained.  Unfortunately, it was starting to get late though, so it was probably best if I called it a day at that point.  As I started loading my stuff back into my car, a great feeling of accomplishment came over me.  I’m not one to be overly emotional about much of anything, but I really had to work to supress the urge to pump both of my fists in the air and scream “I DID IT!!”

Overall, it was a great ride.  I completed my longest distance to date and still felt great afterwords.  I think that this has been my most successful ride yet.

Well, it’s official;  I am now signed up to do a triathlon on August 9th.  Is this a bad idea?  Maybe, but I’m going to do it anyways.  My plan was to start doing tris and races next season, but I’ve been inspired to start doing tris a bit earlier.  If it doesn’t go well, then all that will do is just show me what I need to work on for next year.  So it’s a win-win(-win).

This will be the first time that I can think of where I have ever done anything physically competitive.  This is a whole new arena for me.  To be honest, I’m quite excited.  Finishing last will be nice since I can say that I finished a triathlon.  But finishing ahead of other people will be that much better for my ego.  I don’t plan on coming in first or anything, but who knows that might be in my future some day.

So on Monday, I picked up a new (to me) Cervelo P3SL.  This is one sexy bike.

Isn’t it?

Here’s a component list:
Frame: 2005 Cervelo P3SL
Fork: Cervelo Wolf
Shifters: Dura Ace bar-end
Bars: Oval Concepts A900
Cranks: 172.5mm Dura Ace with a 55T FSA chainring and a Dura Ace 42T chainring
Rear Derailleur: Dura Ace
Cassette: Shimano 105 10-speed 12-25
Front Derailleur: SRAM Rival
Brakes: SRAM Force
Seat Post: Cervelo Aero Carbon
Saddle: Bontrager Race Lite TT
Wheels: Easton Tempest II
Tires: Continental Grand Prix 4000
Pedals: Speedplay Zero

When I got it yesterday, the seat post was a bit too long.  Even with it all the way down, I had trouble reaching the pedals comfortably.  So today, I brought it to my LBS and they cut it down to size for me.   I really love those guys.

After I had the seat post fixed, I took it out for a couple miles.  My dear lord this thing is fast.  As expected, it has an extremely aerodynamic riding position.  I’m not 100% comfortable riding in that position since I’m so far forward, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it.

Anyways, I have a sweet new bike and it’s really fast and I’m really excited.   More pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/26232034@N05/sets/72157605909837557/

Saturday night was the 17th (I think) annual N.I.T.E. ride (Navigate Indy This Evening). It’s a 20 mile leisurely group ride through downtown Indianapolis. Last year, more than 2000 people turned out to ride this. I’m not great at estimating number of people, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there were the same amount of people, if not more, there this year.

My initial plan was to get up to Indy at 8am to do the CIBA Saturday morning ride. Then, I decided that with the N.I.T.E. Ride at 11pm, it probably wasn’t the best idea to do that long of a ride so early in the morning. Instead, I headed up to Indy so I could also do the dinner ride, which was also 20 miles.

I got up there around 4:15pm to register. Since I had preregistered, all I had to do was give my name and they gave me my packet and also a nice bright orange N.I.T.E. Ride t-shirt. I had some time to kill before the dinner ride started at 5pm. I was told that we were allowed to ride around the velodrome before 5, so I got my bike all ready and headed into the Major Taylor Velodrome. I had never watched any racing on a velodrome so I really had no idea what it was going to look like. I stepped in and looked around and was stunned. The track was rather short, which wasn’t that surprising since it’s for cycling, not cars. But the thing that really surprised me was how steep the banked turns were. According to their website, it is a 333.3m track with 28 degree banked turns. That’s just a crazy angle. I did a couple moderately paced laps around it and felt like I was going to slide right off. Then I really pushed it and did 25mph for about a lap and a half and I could barely start leaning into the corners. Those guys must really be flying as they race around that track to feel comfortable.

After that little bit on the track, I went back out to wait for the start of the dinner ride. There were probably around 100-200 people that went on that ride. It’s nice to see so many people out and riding bikes. Anyways, the first leg of the journey was about 10 miles. About halfway through that portion, I looked down to see that my Garmin had turned itself off. Apparently the battery had died. I was a bit perplexed since I had just charged it a couple days before and the battery usually lasts quite a long time. As it turns out, the program that I am using to analyze the data from my Garmin kills the charge any time you sync the Garmin with my computer. It’s quite annoying and I’m still working on a way to fix that. So it looked like the rest of the night I was going to be computer free. I was a bit disappointed since I really love seeing all of that data. I had even brought my heart rate strap with me so I could take a look at my heart rate as well. But what could I do?

About 8 miles into the ride, I started chatting with this nice guy named Dave who was from Indianapolis. We rode about the same pace and he was quite friendly. I told him that I was worried about stopping for dinner since I didn’t have a lock with me. He said that he didn’t either, but he planned on stopping at Subway and their store front is plate glass, so you can see everything that’s going on. I would have loved to go to an Indian place for dinner, but seeing as how paranoid I am about my bike being stolen, I decided to accompany him to Subway. After I had a 6-inch veggie sub and a cup of powerade, we started back out. A couple miles into the return route, we turned onto an unpaved path. It was rideable, but quite tiring. This is also the first time I’ve ever eaten and then immediately gone back out to ride. I’ll make sure never to do that again. Nothing bad happened, and I didn’t get dropped or anything, but I certainly wasn’t feeling 100%. I probably would only have been able to do another 10-15 miles at our current pace however.

Thankfully the route ended about 2 miles after I started feeling iffy.  I said goodbye to Dave and then headed into Indy in order to meet up with Alan at Aesthetics Body Modification.  He was going to try to make it up for the N.I.T.E. Ride, but he messed up his knee a couple weeks before.  I had some time to kill though, and I hadn’t seen his new place yet, so I swung by.  After chatting with him for a good hour or two, I headed back to the velodrome to get ready for the N.I.T.E. Ride.

It was just a little bit busier when I returned than I had left it.  The ride didn’t start for 50 minutes, but there was already probably about 1000 people in line.  I got right in line, since I wanted to be more at the front than at the end.  Upon getting in line, I noticed this one guy who was quite vocal about the dog that he had in a baby sling around his chest.  I found this absolutely retarded that 1) this guy would put a dog in such a place, and 2) then ride 20 miles with the dog like that.  Other than that, the wait for the ride to start was quite uneventful.  Finally at 10:50pm, people started going.  The ride organizers sent people out in bunches of 50-100 people just so it was safe for everyone.  Of course, this meant that me, at the middle of the line, finally crossed the starting line 20 minutes after the first people did.

The ride was amazing.  The roads in Indy are pretty good, but the best part about the whole thing was that we weren’t forced to the side of the road like cyclists normally are.  There were cops at every intersection and the roads we were riding on were blocked off.  There is nothing quite like have the whole road to ride on in downtown Indianapolis.  We rode by the IUPUI campus, which was nice, and then we rode through the city center.  Those buildings are quite pretty.

Another great thing about the ride was how absolutely pissed some drivers were.  As I was riding by an intersection, I heard the following exchange:
“When is this *@#$ going to be over?”
“In about an hour.”
“<angry grumble>”

There was a rest stop about halfway through the ride.  I didn’t need it at all though.  So I just kept on going through.  Shortly afterwords, I caught up with an older gentleman.  I just realized that I never got his name.  Anyways, we rode together for the rest of the ride.  He was friendly as well and made the ride even more enjoyable.

By the time I got back to the velodrome, I wasn’t tired in the least bit.  I feel that is my biggest accomplishment of the weekend.  I rode 20 miles without even feeling it.  I bought my first real bike on June 27th, 2007.  That week, the 2.5 mile commute to my office killed me.  Now, just one year and one day later, I can ride 40 miles in a day without any issue whatsoever.  To be honest, I’m quite amazed.  Just think of what I would have been able to accomplish if I had devoted even more time to this sport.

So today I went out and bought proper running shoes. I figured I’d take up running since I’m not very comfortable cycling at night. Well, tonight I went out for my first run. It was a short a 10 minute loop but it was still nice. It’s interesting how different running and cycling are. I figured since I had pretty good endurance on the bike, I’d be able to run pretty far. Turns out that wasn’t true. :p I did run faster than I ever did in high school though, so that’s promising. In high school when we had to run the mile, I did it in around 12:30. Today, I did just under a mile in 10 minutes, so I’m already doing better. I look forward to running like this a couple times a week; it should be fun.

So this picture isn’t mine.  It was taken by 10 Wheels from BikeForums.  I look pretty snazzy, if I don’t say so myself.