I did it!

Ok, so I did it!


37.67 miles (bike computer) or 36.62 (GPS) - either way, I still passed 35. This is the longest ride so far on the new bike and my longest of this season.

It was a pretty good ride. I left early and the roads and path were pretty empty except for serious cyclists. There are some significant hills between my house and the start of the bike path but once I hit the path, it's pretty flat. This is both good and bad. The good part is no uphills. The bad part is no downhills. It's just pedal, pedal, pedal with no breaks. By the time I got back to end of the path and back to the hilly part, I was actually glad for the change. But the other upside is being able to just ride and not worry about cue sheets, traffic, etc. So, I guess I'll stick with the this for longer rides and work in hills in shorter rides.

I think the next goal will be 42 miles. Maybe next weekend or the following one. I'd like to hit 50 by July 3rd. We'll see.

Happy riding!

35 Miles today

Heading out in a few minutes to do a 35 mile ride, my longest so far. The weather says "partly sunny" but it looks pretty stormy to me. We shall see...

Where is everyone??

So, here we are just a little more than a month before the ride. Where are you guys?? Anyone doing any riding?

I was doing really well on my training until... I ran in a race and injured my ankle. It took a while for it to heal. In fact, it still hurts a little but luckily I was able to start riding again after a few weeks rest. So, I lost about 3 weeks but I'm now gaining steam again. Yesterday I hit 300 miles (ok, well technically it was 299.88 miles but I'm for rounding).

My focus in the next few weeks is on increasing the length of my rides. I've been doing fine on 20-25 milers - some with fairly significant hills. But now I need to get into 30+ milers. Last Saturday I did 28.5 miles with a group of women. The route they've worked out goes right past my old house and ends up right near where I used to work so it was kind of like riding down memory lane. It was a very slow pace but a lot of hills. It helped to just give me the confidence that I can make it up even a big hill.

Yesterday, I did a ride that was helping a roller-blading friend train for her sport by showing her the multi-use path we ride on a lot. It's one of those Rails-to-Trails paths and it's quite long so it's a good place to do a long ride without dealing with traffic. She gave me a shout out in her blog: http://marathonanetdemi.blogspot.com.

While I was waiting for my friend to meet me at the start of the bike path, I found some inspiration for a possible Team Charlie outfit. What do you guys think?



PS - umm... anyone notice that I am like totally ahead in fund raising?? I'm just sayin' is all.

Welcome to Team Charlie 2010!

Well, here we are... another year, another ride. Time to get out those bikes and dust 'em off (or maybe dry them off in the case of Hoot and Sarah (sorry about your basement guys)!

Most of you know I finally bought a new bike at the end of last summer. It turns out it's the same kind of bike as Polly has. I'm super excited to ride it in the Memory Ride this year and hope I'll have a much better ride with it. At the same time, I realized that last year I just simply hadn't trained enough. Having over-trained the first year, clearly I under trained in the second. Maybe that's typical - I don't know. But anyway, I'm determined to do a better job of training this year, particularly on hills which was my biggest struggle last summer.

So, I officially started my training a few weeks ago. I really wanted to get a ride in by March 15th but it didn't happen until the 17th. It wasn't much - just 4.73 mi., but the point was just to get it started. Since then I did a few other short rides just to get back into the feel of riding.

Last Friday, the weather here was just beautiful and I got out and did my longest ride so far - 17.75 mi. Most of that ride was fairly flat except for a few pretty big hills (at least for me at this point in the season). But I was pleased I made it up all the hills except for the really steep one on the way home from pretty much all our rides. Before the steep hill, which I walked up, I stopped to take some pictures of the cherry trees in the park with my new Android phone.

Feeling pretty proud of myself, I did another ride Saturday along the river drive. This was a flat ride and I told myself I would just take it easy and "recover" from the ride the day before. But when I came to my nemesis hill on the way home, I thought, what the heck and gave it a try. I was definitely huffing and puffing but I made it! So, now I told myself that I have to take the hill every time and not be a wuss! :)

Happy spring and happy riding to all!

Tales of a Last-Minute Sally

In keeping with my habit of waiting 'til the last (and I mean VERY last) minute to get things done, I figured I would finally blog about our Memory Ride training rides from the past few weeks (OK, months). When last I blogged (back in May!!??), I mentioned we had 3 rides to report on, but then I only blogged about two of them (Mother's day and San Francisco). The 3rd ride was a really nice 30-mile loop that Ta, Neddie and I did in the Concord/Carlisle area. We came upon this monument in Concord Center:

Then Ta and I got ... well, let's just say distracted with a certain real estate transaction. But while we were on the Cape we did manage to get in a few rides... one long one out to P-town and back and a few shorter ones out to Lt. Island. We stopped in at Wellfleet Bay and visited Charlie's spot:

Back in Boston, we went on another ~25mile ride with Neddie, this time on the South shore/ Blue Hills area. My guess is they're called "Blue" Hills after the color your face turns while trying to climb up them. Aside from oxygen deprivation, this ride was notable for two things: 1) Ta's first wipe-out of the season; 2) a certain street sign we came upon:

Two weekends ago Ned, Ta and I did our last training ride together, a really pretty 40-mile loop on the North shore in Ipswitch/Essex/Manchester. We wrapped up the ride at Singing beach where we dipped our tootsies in the chilly Atlantic.

Not only am I a last-minute-Sally blogger, but I'm also last minute when it comes to training. The 40-mile North shore ride with Ta & Ned made me realize how woefully underprepared for the big ride I was. I had to work last weekend so I wasn't able to do any rides. So this past week I went into panic mode. Monday I put my bike on the back of my Mini, drove to a commuter rail station about 20 miles away from work and rode in from there. OMG, Worcester county has some serious hills. Let's just say, Monday was a short work day... it took me 2 hrs to ride in and 1.5 to ride back, so I think I was only at work for an hour or two. Tuesday was wicked rainy here so I just put my bike on the trainer in the basement and rode for about 45min. Wednesday I did a 40-mile portion of the Memory Ride route. And, yes, it did include the dreaded "6 miles of crying". The good news is that it's definitely do-able, but it is tough. My advice is don't over think it, cause you'll psych yourself out... just take it one hill at a time. Yesterday, I did a quick out and back on the Minuteman path, which is about 20miles, easy flat riding. I did that mostly to just re-inforce the work I had done earlier in the week. I thought it would be completely uneventful, but then I decided to have what I'm calling a "sympathy crash" for Polly. I completely scraped up my knee and got a big bruise on my tussic.

Today, I decided to take the day off and rest my weary bones.

I think I might be ready...

Belated Tales from Nova Scotia

So thanks to some handy work by Brendan I have rescued about 90% of my pictures from the trip and can now report back in full technicolor. (n.b. lupins are ubiquitous in the Acadian scenery.)

Yes, there was quite a bit of rain up in The North Country and I was wishing I had splurged for those waterproof shoe protectors at REI but once you accept the rain its not that bad. And all told I was in pretty good biking weather most of the time; not too sunny, not too humid, not too cold.

The first day there I just did a short 45 mile loop not too far from Yarmouth but after spending the next day in a rental car driving the Fundy Coast I decided to take the plunge and do my 4-day loop in 3 days. From Yarmouth to Barrington day 1, Barrington to lervely Trout Point Lodge on day 2 and back to Yarmouth on the final day.
Here I am on the first day's trial run looking very contented. This was before I rode right into a serious black cloud of pummeling rain. (see storm clouds in next picture)

So one nice thing I discovered is that my new panniers come with their own little yellow raincoats. Isn't that handy? If only my shoes did too.








The weather seemed nice enough the day I left and the forecast looked the best it had been all week. But of course as soon as I turned onto the first major road, the deluge came and I was soaked before I could even don my terrible outfit.

You can't see my booties too well here but yes, those are plastic bags on my feet. They did the job well enough and after 12 or so miles of rain it started to clear up and I had dried off by mid day.

Most of the first day was along what is called the 'lighthouse route'. It was a lovely road through many a quaint seaside village, although I only saw a couple lighthouses.
I did pass by the site of the famous (?) Shag Harbor 1967 UFO incident. Alas I could find no UFO.
After the sun came out I found a place called Creamy Treat and finally discovered the joy of ice cream and cycling. I don't know why I was such a hater before.




After a night at a pretty boring motel in Barrington I headed out in the early mist (see the picture at top) for my longest day of the trip. I was pretty worried about the climb on this day coupled with the distance but it turned out to be a very low grade and gradual climb and once I decided to put it in the 2nd gear I cruised most of the way. And awaiting me at the end was a stay at the very relaxing and beautiful Trout Point Lodge. Gourmet food, river swimming, hot tub on the bank of the river, and a Swedish massage. Every cyclist's dream.
I thought the final day would be the easiest since it was the shortest and I had an hour long massage that morning but the checkout person cautioned me that it was pretty hilly on the way back to Yarmouth and she was not lying.

All in all, it was a great trip that I recommend to all. While there are not very good shoulders on the roads up there most drivers are very courteous to if slightly confused by cyclists and the roads overall were in good shape. I realized I really like the idea of touring - of biking to a new place each night rather than just looping immediately back to where you started and I am already starting to hatch plans for my next bike tour. I've also found that the best way to do it is to stay at nice hotels with really good food. So....who's in?

We're here!

Not wanting to make Polly feel so lonely, I thought I'd make a quick blog post to point out that Team Charlie is once again on the fund raising leader board in 4th place!
I'm not sure about the rest of you, but I'm definitely finding it a bit harder to reach my goal this year. But the totals are creeping up little by little.

How's everyone doing with the riding part? Nancy and I have done a fair amount of training but nowhere near what we did last year. I'm hoping that's ok since a) we're in better shape and b) I probably over-trained last year since I was nervous I couldn't do it.

Can't wait to see everyone - just a bit more than 2 weeks!