First Ride of 2009 and cleaning the files

Today the SAG guy and I did a short ride to stretch our legs. The much advertized and warned about "scattered and very strong thunderstorms in front of the nex cold front" did not start at midnight. In fact it failed to show at all, at least on our side of town. Oh, to be a weatherman in Houston, where you don't even have to be right half of the time.

The day turned out warm, with temperatures in the low 80s and very windy. The combination of winds gusting to 30 mph and Phil feeling a bit sore and fragile after a very hard workout yesterday made us decide to just do a short coffee shop loop, using as many tree lined side roads as possible as wind breaks. Of course since the trees have no leaves, the windbreak theory was soon disproved.

In spite of having quartering headwinds for the first part of the ride and hard headwinds for the middle third, we did actually have a nice tailwind on the way home. This is a rare enough occurence to take note of. We even took time for our mid-ride coffee break and got caught up on the newspaper, and beat the clouds home. All in all, a good stretch and warm up for some more serious riding during the week.

Some Riding Statistics

Part of my end of year, start of new year activities is to clean out files and close out training logs and journals. I did the totaling of mileage today and closed out my current ride log since the notebook was full. Here follow some bike statistics starting in February 06, when I joined a gym, started losing weight and started seriously trying to ride. The log ends December 30, of this year, when I ran out of space. I will be starting the new log with today's ride.

Trek hybrid bike-the bike I started on

Between February 2006 and August 2007 I rode 2,806 miles, used 2 tubes, 1 brake cable, 1 set of brake pads and one chain. The mileage includes the 600 mile breast cancer ride along the Mississippi River in spring of 07.

Trek Pilot 5.2 the new bike I added

Starting in August of 2007 and ending with December 30, 2008 I rode 5,504 miles and used 2 tubes, got 2 new tires, 2 new brake cables, 2 new brake pads and a new gear stack. I am still riding on the original wheels, and seat but before I head out for the transcontinental southern tier in March I will have everything looked at and replaced as needed, Of the 5, 504 miles, 1851 were accomplished on last springs' ride from Mobile, AL to Niagara Falls, Ontario on behalf of Heifer International Charity. The rest of the mileage is local training and an occasional local charity ride for Lions Club International.

The end result of all the biking and committed training is that I have gone from 233 pounds to 141 and from a woman's size 22-24 or XXL to a petite size 8-10. That equates to about 87 miles a pound which doesn't really work out as far as calorie burn but ....

Whether all those miles and hours have added years to my life is another question but I have certainly enjoyed them, in a masochistic sort of way and I am definitely leaner, stronger and more content.

Today's Stats

Distance 25.35 miles, ride time 1 hour 33 minutes, average speed 15.1.

The Sag Guy's stats were a little different on the time since I played jack rabbit on the way home.