So it's great to be home, and was a real joy to return to wonderful weather, in the 60's or better. Green Mountain is finally starting to show some green too. Its nice to finally experience some warming and greening. Most of my experience in Colorado to this point has only been during the winter. The only other time I was here was in July, when SunRayce97 finished in Colorado Springs. It was that experience that started my desire to live out here.
Anyhow, I live a good distance away from where I work. About 25 miles by car. My morning commute takes me about 30 minutes, and my afternoon can be upwards of an hour or more, depending on traffic and which way I choose to go. I've been wanting to commute by bike to work at least 1 time a week. Mostly for the sake of fitness and my love of riding my bike, but also to help save with gas of course. I figured riding 1 time a week would save me 1 tank of gas every 4-5 weeks, as well as the wear and tear on the car.
Looking at route options, I figured the simplest way would be to take the C-470 Path all the way down to just south of my office building the head north on mostly back roads. It would be quite long... I think encroaching on 30+ miles. I figured I'd give it a test run yesterday to see how it would work out. I didn't really occur to me that I hadn't ridden my bike for at least 2 mos. and not much before that since I moved here in November.
So I took off in the early-mid afternoon and found the trail I was looking for. I felt great, the weather was nice, and I was having fun. I was observing lots of spring wildlife and looking at some of the early flowers blooming around here. I saw an Eastern Meadowlark, and almost ran over about a dozen different prairie dogs. Well, at some point, I realized that I must have missed a turn somewhere since I was now heading North, when I should have been going East, and I was starting to fatigue a little. I abandoned hopes of making it to the office and just wanted to find a way back to trail I was familiar with. Familiar meaning I still had an idea of their location and direction based on what I remember of the map. I've not actually ridden on many trails around here yet. So I saw another trail along a river that I knew headed North and South. Got myself on that trail, and then picked up the C-470 trail back West to go home.
By this time, it had clouded over, and cooled off quite a bit. Also started to get pretty windy. On my way east, I don't think I realized just how much I was going down hill either. I certainly noticed going up hill headed West and North though. My legs were on fire. I couldn't sustain speeds any better than 10 mph and I had at least 15-20 miles to get home. Lord help me.
Obviously, I made it home. Hindsight has me kicking myself in the pants. I don't know what I was thinking, planning a 50+ mile trip with zero conditioning. At least I did get lost, and was able to shorten things up. My body was very adamant on letting me know there was no amount of "thinking" that was going to make it move any faster or hurt less.
So the details of my trip are here. Sorry I don't have the HR band going. The battery in it is dead, along with my cadence sensor. I guess I'll be working up to a commuting distance slowly. Blah. I hate being out of shape. Oh well. At least I'm well on my way to loosing the 10 pounds I gained while traveling to and from Antarctica.
No comments:
Post a Comment