Training Rides - May 13 & 14

As my trip gets closer I can already feel a difference in my "biking legs" as I can now power through more hills and flats at a faster speed and in a harder gear. This was particularly evident on my Thursday (May 13th) commute home from work. Not only was the weather beautiful, but I was moving along at 15.8 mph which might be my fastest commute time yet.

I also experienced some of the worst sweat dripping on my sunglasses to date. After getting a shorter haircut Thursday in preparation for the summer, I also conveniently forgot any type of sweat band/bandanna and therefore my glasses were soaked. A while back I purchased a biking sweat band that has a yellow pad to channel the sweat to the edge of your forehead (avoiding sunglasses), but I was waiting for shorter hair to try it out.


I used the headband today and it worked great!

On a different note, one picks up on some interesting details after riding the same route time and time again. Along my commute there is a house with two geese in the front yard. You might think they look real (as did I the first time), but they are most definitely not. Oddly enough, they still move! The homeowners leave the geese in a certain configuration for 1-2 days and then move them around the large front yard. Here they are discussing the fact that there is no body of water nearby:


After my commute home Thursday night, I did another 12 hour turn around and rode back into work this morning. If commute rides must have themes, today's was f-o-g-g-y! I got to make good use of my blinking rear safety light and was reminded that with my new handlebar bag I no longer have a functioning front safety light because the bag is too tall. I will have to remedy this situation in the next 2 weeks. Again, my commute speed this morning was a little bit slower, but not nearly as tiring as the last time I did the night-morning turn around. Today's ride sums up a week of riding a bike 5 out of 5 work days (mountain biking Wednesday) - all in all a great training week!



One of the tricky aspects of riding in early morning fog is dealing with my sunglasses. I still prefer to wear the glasses during early morning rides to keep the bugs/dirt out of my eyes, but the fog wreaks havoc on my visibility. It is somewhat the inverse of sweat running down the inside of my glasses in that the fog moisture builds up on the outside of my glasses and forces me to take them off. C'est la vie!

Riding into Blacksburg today I saw a tent getting setup to sell boiled peanuts for the 2010 ACC softball championships. Do they have those in Minneapolis? Sigh...how I will miss the South!