35 miles in the heat and humidity yet again after 18 holes in the am.

I thought about going further but kept straight at Bumpy Oak Rd. due to the heat taking a toll on me. I guess I need the HTFU and turn next time.:p

Started out at 6:20 AM, 77° 74% humidity . I almost didn't go at all due to being a little tired or not motivated but took off and 30 minutes later I was a wet rag.
It was so humid. Anyway I decided to head out on my normal 30ish mile route and ended up doing 65 miles and going on some roads I have never been on. I had to stop twice for cold drinks but ll in all a great ride. I am so glad I went.
I did find a tick on me during the ride and know how it got there. I was riding close to the edge of the road and there was some tall grass that was hanging over the edge and my leg brushed up against it. As I was riding along later I looked at my foot and saw a black spot on my leg, sure enough a tick. I had found one the night before but thought I got that one playing golf but now know I rode the same road yesterday and more than likely got that one there as well.

I've been riding the hilly Kettle Moraine region west of Madison Wisconsin 3 of the last 5 weekends. Saturday I completed a 100k training ride for the Dairyland Dare in August, I climbed 6500ft.

It's becoming much easier to ride out these steep climbs. I completed the ride without needing to walk or to rest. I'll keep going up there this summer, it's better than the repetitive flat training I have been performing close to Chicago.

55 miles, overcast when i left at 1 pm. Temp 68 to 80. 80 at the foot hills, 68 at the coast. Got sunny later, wind kicked up to make it more fun.

89 miles, temps 92* humidity 92% rode to Galveston TX

http://i256.photobucket.com/albums/h...eaWolfPark.jpg

Slide show:

http://s256.photobucket.com/albums/h...view=slideshow

Regular 17 mile RT commute. I took the single speed Raleigh with panniers today, 80F+ this morning, 90F+ on the return home. I'll garage the single speed until Fall since she takes a lot out of me even when it's not this hot. Tomorrow I drop my wife at the airport so I'm hauling the neo stingray bike - Ruby into the office to show off. She's a bit unwieldy for rides over 3-5 miles and the banana saddle would tear me up on a full commute.

6/25 23 mile night ride with the D
6/26 No ride today
6/27 No ride
6/28 Went out to ride and got about 1/8 of a mile from the house and the back tire blew. Went back home took the wheels off of the bike and drove them to the LBS. New tires and tubes and had the wheels trued.
6/29 30.4 miles with a heat index of 98 and humidity 55%

576 miles this month
3461 miles this year
110 ride days TY vs 113 ride days LY
4038 miles needed to hit 2010 goal (7500 miles)
I am @ 46% of my goal. I need to be @ 66.6% (5000 miles) by the end of August
253 miles ahead of this date last year

40 miles, rain ,one flat tire 2 miles from home.

And I am working on getting my smile/mile ratio up a bit. Right now:

10.236789 smiles per mile
Looks like I have about 10,000 smiles in so far, but I am just smiling while guessing.
My goal is 12 smiles per mile at the end of the season.
Added 280 smiles today.
Hope I make it.

Today my ride's goal was to find "many hills" and ride them with 40 lbs. of gear in rack trunk and panniers (saddlebags), to add at least some training for our first "multi-day mini-tour", starting July 12th. The whole tour is 200 miles over 3 to 4 days, a lot of hill's and one pretty good "mnt. pass", (Hardscrabble Pass, between Wetmore and Westcliffe, CO. ) Today was warm, sunny but with a constant 20 mph. crosswind with gust's so it was kind like a headwind in most directions and will finding and ridding hills, my 26.5 miles was kinda tough but rewarding.

One objective was to find out how the bike handled the extra weight, that was a success, the "frankenbrid" handled like a dream, no twitch, even going up steep hills, etc. Now the "motor", ie: ME, well, it's too bad you can't yet have your "brain" stuffed in a robot's body, LOL. It's kinda funny, that semi-steep uphill's seem "worse" than steep up hills?? On the flats, the load is no biggie but on a semi-steeping hill, with a longer grade, you can really FEEL the weight. I can't tell you how GLAD I am that we decided to "Hotel" this mini-tour, (still saving for a BOB tralier), instead of tent camp!! It's a lot lighter load to have to "pedal up the hills with" when your moteling.

Here's hoping the "wind" with be at our backs for the first couple of days, giving us more "TIME" go get our touring legs going! Still it's so cool the time is getting closer, even with the intrepedation, we can't wait to get, "On the road again"! ;)

30 miles and I also had a rear flat. 90° but for some reason it was not too bad, low humidity 32%.
Something happened when I was fixing it that made me smile. Apparently a guy had seen me fixing my flat as he drove by because I saw this guy pull up and slow way down and asked if I had everything I needed. I told him yeah I did but thanks and he then made a u-turn and drove away.
He didn't have a bike rake on his car but I guess he could have been a bike guy. That was very nice of him if you ask me. First time that ever happened to me.
Oh later on I got a "Go Lance shout out" it has been a long time since I had one of those too.

I rode 33 miles from home after work. Yeah, it was hot. But it was good. It was bright and sunny when I started, with little or no wind. About halfway I started noticing a little wind. About 10 miles from the end I noticed a very dark sky in the direction of home and the wind was getting stronger. About 5 miles from home the wind was blowing hard and right in my face. The sky was looking ominous. My chances of getting home before the storm were looking very slim. I started thinking about places I could duck out of the rain along the way. About 2 miles from home I thought I felt a couple of rain drops on my hand, but I think it was just sweat which was starting to flow onto my sunglasses from the now saturated bandanna I wore on my head. About a half mile from home I noticed the wind had calmed and the sky was merely overcast and gray, not black and threatening. The storm had blown over. It was a great ride. :)

:thumb:

Yesterday I had the privilege of riding 27 miles with 2 significant BF 50+'ers. I chalked it up as a great riding day in my log.:thumb:

Rode 32 miles with the local cycling club this evening. It was a beautiful evening and a nice group ride with a couple long time riding buds among others. Our route covered some of the the local July 4th Twin Sizzler Road Race and when we got to the bottom of the race's defining hill I just had to "hit it".:innocent: Four years ago, the Twin Sizzler was my first race and the hill took me to my knees:cry:, now it's my b**** because I own it.

I'm loving this recovery week so far.:D

Perhps there is a book in here somewhere. "Training for Smiling after 50" or "How I turned my grimacing life into a smiling life by bicycling" "Techniques of bicycle smiling after 70"

What a coincidence, I had the same privilege yesterday as well.:p:thumb:

34 miles today. Ran over a spike, it destroyed my rear tire and tube.

41 miles, including 32 on the local hill-climbing club ride and the rest riding too and from the ride. This was my second week on this ride and I absolutely love it. I rode it considerably faster than last week, in part because I was able to ride my Trek, whereas last week I had to ride the steel touring bike with toe clips. The only downside today is that I never really found a group to ride with. This ride attracts maybe 40-50 riders, but there's no way I can hang with the fast group and I was well ahead of the slower groups. Spent much of the ride in the sparse region in between, riding with a couple of individuals for different parts of the ride.

Most of the hills felt pretty good, but today Ramsey Hill, renowned around here as the steepest hill in St. Paul and the last climb of the ride, had me mashing and sucking air bigtime. By the end of the summer, I want to finish out this ride by spinning up that hill.

12.4 miles @ 19.7 ave. Always feels great to get in a ride before work.

Monday we rode 51 miles from Ouray, Co. to Telluride, Co. Tuesday we rode 64 miles from Telluride, Co. to Dolores, Co. Today we rode 51 miles from Dolores, Co. to Durango, Co. Tomorrow it is 70 miles from Durango back to Ouray over 3 big mountain passes. My legs are tired!

30 miles , it was 81° with 30% humidity. I have to think with cooler weather is the reason I went a mph above what I normally have been doing lately.
It was beautiful riding, my bike felt so good under me too. The shifts were smooth and the ride quiet.
This ride gave me 664 total miles for the month of June.

6/30
18.5 miles today. I took some instructions from one of TSIs post and made a handle bar mount for my camera. I took about 40 picture (2048 x 1536 size) and most of them came out pretty well. I think I had to delete about 6 of them due to camera shake. I plan to try it again tomorrow with some different settings (640 x 480 size). I hope to be able to use the video feature of the camera as well. I was riding about 10/12 mph when I took these photos. (Left to right) photo 1 is the entrance to the Seminole Wekiva Trail at the San Sabastion Trail Head. Photo 2 is the entrance to the Seminole Softball Complex. Photo 3 is the entrance to the bike tunnel under SR 434 a very dangerous intersection.

594 miles this month
3479 miles this year
111 ride days TY vs 113 ride days LY
4020 miles needed to hit 2010 goal (7500 miles)
I am @ 46% of my goal. I need to be @ 66.6% (5000 miles) by the end of August
272 miles ahead of this date last year

The large size photos will work best. You can then crop them to show what you were aiming at.
You have to steady the camera when shooting.

26.3 miles yesterday and 41.3 this morning. What a nice day for a ride, temps were in the 70's. I call for repeat weather tomorrow.

51 miles today, all on the coast. 792 miles this month. Best month to date. I am getting stronger.