Geeky Bob

Today was supposed to be a "Long Day," but it was a rather short long day; even though that's kind of an oxymoron. Let me explain: last night I rode 17 miles, which was not one of my normally-scheduled rides. I usually do short rides of 15-30 miles on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I do longer rides of 40 or more miles on Saturdays. With this schedule in place, I do not ride on the day before a long ride, so my legs feel refreshed by Saturday morning when I head out.

That being said, as I got on the road this morning I could feel residual fatigue from my ride the night before, so I could tell that I wasn't riding at my best. In addition, a major storm system was headed my way, and I could see it rapidly approaching on the horizon. With both of those factors in mind, I made up my mind fairly early in the ride to do a single pass around the Pistol Hill Loop Road and call it a day. That route is a little over a metric half-century, and that was fine by me.

If I had to title today's ride, however, the name I would give it is "The Day of the Tarantula." Seriously - I saw no less than 10 good-sized tarantulas along the road, and I had to swerve to miss several of them. (Cleaning tarantula guts off my bicycle would really suck.)

Apart from all of that, I am really learning to like my Garmin 510 that I am now using to track my rides. I've set up the screen to track my cadence, heart rate, current speed, total distance, etc., so at any moment I can get a pretty decent idea of how my ride is going. I have been trying to keep an average of 70rpm for my riding cadence, and I managed to hit that average for today's ride.

Ride Stats:

• Primary Statistics:
  • Start Time: 10:15am
  • Distance: 31.6 miles
  • Duration: 2:15:152
  • Calories Burned: 1,151 kcal
  • Altitude Gain: 1,280 feet
• Speed:
  • Average Speed: 14.0 mph
  • Peak Speed: 28.1 mph
• Temperature:
  • Minimum: 80.6 F
  • Average: 88.6 F
  • Maximum: 93.2 F
• Heart Rate:
  • Average: 151 bpm
  • Maximum: 177 bpm