Bike Ride

I got in 13 miles last night. I didn't really want to stop there, I thought that I should round up to 16 or so. However, I'd been out for an hour and 22 minutes and was hungry.

Yeah, they were slow miles. Half of them were on gravel. The maintained gravel roads are still wet with loose rock on the sides. I had to get over to let cars go by a couple of times. It was like running in soft sand. I liked it, it was a good workout. The weather was nice and the wind wasn't too much of an issue.

12 miles on the trainer is a mind numbing experience. My bike computer hasn't been functioning on the mountain bike, I think that I need batteries. SO, I didn't really know how long I'd been gone. I set the timer on my watch, but didn't check it. As I was nearing home I thought I'd been keeping a good pace. I looked at my watch, it said 1:14. The time flew. The trainer is an evil. A nescessary evil, but still evil. Even when watching movies.

I'm participating in the Great STrides program with some gals at work. It's sponsored by Sanford Health, Vermillion. For those of you not familiar, it's an incentive program to get out and excercise. You log your miles and your team miles is an average of members. One mile walking or running equals one mile. One mile biking does not equal one, but 1/4 of a mile. I understand that biking is typically a more efficient workout than walking or running. I'm a slow runner. IT takes me 36 minutes to run 3 miles, unless I'm trying to chase someone down in a 5k race. There is no world that I can cover 12 miles on a bike in 36 minutes. I would have to be busting my tail, road or mountain. I don't like the conversion. So, I'm putting in a lot of work for not many countable miles. If it were all about the miles, I guess that I could just walk and run every day.

I'm hoping to be able to bike to work by the end of the month. That will mean a couple of days with 32 miles biked and 8 countable miles.

TDK...

Well, I've been thinking about it for awhile now and I think that I've decided that I won't be doing the TDK this year. AT least not all of it. I'll likely register for the first day. MAYBE the second one too.

I still plan to bike as much as I have time for, but there are other things that I want to work on at home. I want to actually have a garden this year, not just a weed patch. Nick will be farming and the plan is that the garden will be my responsibility this year. That's just a couple projects. And I don't like the panic of whether I've trained hard enough or not. Let's face it, the weather certainly hasn't been cooperative this year. It never is really, but seems less so this season.

Plus, I would really kind of like to have a vacation with the hubby this year. That's the main thing. I went on vacation without him last year and that was weird, not something I want to do every year. We'd like to get some camping in this summer, or time to just hang out and be bums together.

Don't get me wrong, I will miss riding the tour with you guys. There will be more Lanehogs in attendance than last year and friends that I met last year will again be present. Perhaps I'll have to bike to work every day that week to be in solidarity with the crew. :-) Or, I will just make the resolution to at least do the TDK every other year, or so... Though I wouldn't mind trying RAGBRAI someday either.