Bike ride kicked my ass today.
Man, I had one of the hardest bike rides in a long time. For the longest time my bike was out of commission since I got a flat, and then decided to get tire liners, and then popped a tube trying to put the tire-liner in…got frustrated and never finished. Since the weather is getting better and it seemed like the perfect time to take a ride, I got the motivation to get my tires fixed. I decided to pay REI to install my tire liners for piece of mind that if my tire pops, it isn’t necessarily because I installed these tire liners incorrectly. I hope to get more than 3 rides out of these tubes…which was my average out of the past 3 tubes…but anyways. On to this ride. The way to work was pretty easy, mostly all down-hill, I was cruising and made it there in about an hour, 15 miles. I wasn’t pushing myself too hard, since I knew I would need to come back and wanted to save some of my energy. This was the first time riding with my new backpack which carried my laptop, lock, clothes, shoes, and everything else I needed for work, so it was a little on the heavy side, and I didn’t have any water like I usually do with my camelbak, but overall it worked fine on the way there. However, I think the weight really caught up with me on the long climb home. It took me 1:30 to get home, and I had to stop a couple times. Once because my stupid chain fell off since my front gear didn’t change correctly, and then I overshifted…which caused it to be currently jammed…which kinda sucked because that meant I had to ride on my big gear the rest of the way home…about 7 more miles. The other time since I was just too tired, and decided to stop at the the middle school off blue ravine to get some water and take off my bag for a few minutes. I switched from listening to a book to listening to music for the remainder of the ride, and found that i definitely ride faster when I am listening to music…I tend to pedal to the beat instead of thinking about how tired I am. Either way I finally made it back and could barely walk into the house. My legs haven’t been this tired for a really really long time. I have a solid base line in which to compare my next ride to. Hopefully it won’t be too far off…
