Week 8

Date
February 26, 2017

Distance
101 miles

Strava Link
Week 8

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Ride Video

Ride Report 
Things were a mess earlier this week. My car broke down on Friday, so I spent all of Monday taking care of that issue. The car was an old Saturn that came into the picture in early 2014 after I broke my hip. Before that time I was a hardcore bike commuter and didn't have my own car. I didn't expect much out of the car. I figured I would recover from my injury and go back to riding my bike everywhere. Well, having a car spoiled me and I actually preferred being able to get more rest during the week so I could ride harder on my days off. My commute at the time was 23 miles per day, which isn't a whole lot but does get old after a while. I think something around the 10-mile per day mark would be just about perfect. But here I am now living 25 miles away from work because I'm an idiot.

Anyway, the car was worth so little and it broke down so badly that it didn't make sense to fix it. I ended up buying another older POS because I'm cheap. If I get 3 years out of this car I'll be happy. I got a minivan, believe it or not. I have this fantasy of living in a van for a year. This isn't the right van for the job, but maybe it's like a gateway drug into the van world. I can fit both a road bike and a mountain bike in there. I may or may not be able to fit my motorcycle in there. I'm going to try in the next few days. If I can't get it to fit, it's capable of pulling a small trailer. I'm hoping this will be my solution to riding across Nevada later this year. I can leave the van near the NV/UT border, ride the motorcycle home, then ride my bike back to the van. I have all kinds of dumb ideas. I probably should have bought an even cheaper car, but the van was only $3,000 and I'm hoping having my motorcycle will keep my fuel expenses low during the summer.

Back to this week's ride. It rained on Monday and Tuesday, so I put this ride off until Sunday. Sound familiar? Just like last time, the weather cooperated. It was windy, but lately any day with sunshine feels like a victory. I'm hoping for more of the same next week.

Week 7

Date
February 13, 2017

Distance
100 miles

Strava Link
Week 7

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Ride Video

Ride Report 
This was the second day of a back-to-back. I felt pretty good. I never feel 100% on the second day, but my legs weren't very sore and I pretty much forgot it was the second day for most of the ride. That's pretty good news for February, especially since the weather has been preventing me from riding as much as I'd like.

Week 6

Date
February 12, 2017

Distance
101 miles

Strava Link
Week 6

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Ride Video

 

Ride Report 
The bad weather continues. I did a long ride on Sunday, which ended up being pretty windy. Monday was supposed to be windy and rainy (the wind came, but not the rain), so I did a little MTB ride and some work around the house. Then I found out that I had to work on Tuesday. That sucked, but Tuesday was super windy and not a good day to ride anyway. That meant I was forced to get this week's ride in today. It's never good to only have one specific day to ride in February. There's a decent chance the weather could be bad. That goes for any year. This year has been especially crazy, so I was a little nervous.

Luck was on my side today. The weather was great. It was sunny all day and there wasn't any wind. I actually have to work on Tuesday again this week, so I'll be doing another one tomorrow. Hopefully the weather is just as nice.

It's good to do a back-to-back, because I officially decided on my south to north route. I decided on the El Paso Route. There's a link to the map and the itinerary here. The ride still needs a name. If you have any ideas, let me know. I may call it SNAP, which is the South to North American Passage. I actually wanted to call my other route CRAP (Calexico to Roosville American Passage), which would have been a lot more fun. All of my other ideas have been bad. For example: RASN (Ride America South to North), pronounced like "raisin". I could eat raisins every day. That's not very inspiring. There are so many better dried fruits out there. Or how about ARSN (America Ride South to North)? I could set the whole country on fire! Pretty dumb.

I talk about it in the video, but since this is a credit card tour like Petoji I have a lot of things squared away already. There will be two main changes this time. (1) I'm going with full aero bars. My #1 complaint during Petoji was hand pain. Hopefully the aero bars can help a little. There's not much climbing on this route (I think the biggest day is only 8,000 feet.), so the extra weight won't make much difference. (2) I'm doing a different bag setup this time. Last time I wore a little string backpack, which wasn't very heavy yet still managed to annoy me. I'm going to get one of those large saddle bags (something like this) and maybe a slightly larger frame bag (like this) to go with it. I'll get the saddle bag first and see how much stuff I can fit in there.

I'll talk more about gear and a packing list as things get closer and I make all of my final decisions. For now I'm just happy that the route is set and I have something concrete to train for. Bring on July.

Week 5

Date
January 31, 2017

Distance
100 miles

Strava Link
Week 5

Route Map/Profile

Weather

Ride Video

Ride Report 
I was in Reno returning a rental car (that I used to buy a motorcycle, believe it or not), so I rode some old familiar roads. It was a pretty nice day, but I just didn't have good legs today. That happens from time to time. It's not like I'm fast even when I'm feeling good, so I shouldn't really worry about it.

That's it for January. I actually managed to squeeze in 988 miles for the month, which was somewhat surprising considering how terrible the weather was. I'm still on pace for a century per week, but I'm behind on my other goals. However, I am very close to finalizing my plans for my south to north ride across the country in June. I hope to have all the details ready for next week's post.