Going Around Twice

This afternoon I walked from my apartment to Drew's apartment (55 minutes/2.5 miles) because my bike was still at his apartment from last weekend. I had to carry my bike floor pump over because he didn't have one and I knew our tires would need air. Of course, he somehow claimed that the pump, "matches his bike perfectly" and so I'll now have to buy another bike pump for my house.

Once I got there, I filled up our water bottles and we headed out to the Park. I was thinking that it wouldn't be that great of a ride because of all of the traffic, but by the time we got into the park (4:17 pm) it had probably thinned out a bit and wasn't horrible. There were still a couple of near misses of crazy bikers who weren't riding in a straight line, but over all it wasn't too bad. Drew only had time to go once around the loop because he had to go back to work, but I decided that I would go around twice.

The weather was extremely nice today - in the mid 80s, which was nice but made me really thirsty. I think that it would be a good investment to get another water bottle and cage for my bike. The second time around the loop was a little bit harder than the first time, although I think that I actually might have gone a tiny bit faster the second time. Not too hard to believe since I did spend part of the time on the first loop chatting a little bit with Drew. On the second loop, I really tried to concentrate on pulling and pushing the pedals. I can definitely feel the difference and will have to try to keep that in mind more often in the future.

The biggest problem with today was that my cadence wasn't registering on the bike computer. Everything else was working fine (MPH, distance, time) but not the cadence. I was really frustrated in the beginning, but then told myself that I would just do my best to keep pedaling and even if it wasn't perfect or as high as it should have been, it was still better than not going on the ride.

My time for just the riding in the park was 53 minutes for 12 miles total. Average speed of 13.58 MPH. I'm really going to have to work on getting that up, but it's a good starting point. The other thing that I'm going to have to do from now on is keep the park riding and the street riding times and distances separate. For instance, my total riding time today was 1 hour, 23 minutes for a total of 15.94 miles, which makes the average speed 11.52 MPH. Big difference. Counting the street riding is really bringing my average down. Mostly because I'm too chicken to ride faster in the street.

I'm hoping I can squeeze in a visit to LBS tomorrow and ask them about the cadence issue on the computer as well as getting a new water bottle cage. Oh, and of course, buying a new floor pump. I didn't quite get in the total 3 hours of breaking in the orthotics today, but I wore them for at least 2.5 hours, so that's probably close enough.