With Sunday, Apr 27, upon us the first week of Biking To Live is in the history books. Overall it’s been a great week. I did four rides this week:

1. Ride 1 – Day 1 of Biking To Live
2. Ride 2 – Christmas in April
3. Ride 3 – Crazy Drivers
4. Ride 4 – Saturday biking starts the weekend off right

Here’s the numbers breakdown for each of these rides:

1. Ride 1: 10.83 miles, 53 minutes, 12.26 mph average speed
2. Ride 2: 10.2 miles, 48 minutes, 12.75 mph average speed
3. Ride 3: 9.86 miles ,47 minutes, 12.4 mph average speed
4. Ride 4: 17.48 miles, 1 hr 19 minutes, 13.2 mph average speed
5. Total For Week: 48.37 miles, 3.78 hrs, 12.65 mph average speed

For my first week back into an exercise program and cycling in a very, very long time I’m more than happy with those numbers. I didn’t push myself overly hard to achieve them and they give me targets to shoot for next week. The rides themselves were very good and they’ve left me feeling better about myself than I did last week. It’s amazing what a little exercise will do for you.

I suffered my first injury, Trouble Down Below, but a switch to another pair of shorts seems to have alleviated the problem.

I discovered some great folks over at Bike Forums. You should check them out if you are new or coming back to cycling after a long layoff. Lots of great information.  Another website that’s helped me this week is Bike Noob.  It caters to the biking newbie and has some great articles by Ray.

Week 2 Goals

With week 1 in the books I want to try and improve every week. Therefore, I’ll be implementing weekly goals for myself. Looking at week 1′s total stats ( 48.37 miles, 3.78 hrs, 12.65 mph average speed), I believe I want to push my weekly mileage to at least 50 miles total for the week, a total time to at least 4 hrs, and a Saturday ride of at least 20 miles. If I hit 50 miles and 4 hrs exactly that’ll be about a 1% increase over my week 1 numbers. I think that’s doable.

While I usually sleep in on Saturdays, I made a commitment to myself to carry my riding into Saturdays as well. That means I turned in early on Friday and got up early today to ride. While I didn’t get up as early as I do on weekdays (5:00 AM), I did get up at 7:00 AM and was on the road by 7:15. I don’t think I’ve gotten up that early on a Saturday since my days in the military. Since I’ve set out on my mission, Biking To Live, this is the first day/ride that I’ve ridden my route in daylight. Also, since it was daylight, I was able to ride the bike lane for most of the ride. Once my light comes in I’ll be able to do this for my early morning weekday rides as well.

Well, today was Ride 3 of Biking To Live and the ride went fine. As the day has come and gone, though, I’ve started to experience a little bit of discomfort in my nether region. You know. The are of your body that never sees the light of day but can be a serious pain in the…..you get the picture. Anyway, it appears that I have rubbed a spot raw on the inner side of my right leg near my….ahem…business. I’ve put some skin relief lotion on it to try and take care of it because I want to be able to get my Saturday ride in tomorrow. I’m not surprised that something like this has happened since it’s been so long since I’ve drug myself around on a bike.

I read an interesting by Ray at Bike Noob entitled I’m Riding In Comfort Now that makes me wonder if my bike shorts have contributed to the problem. My shorts are relatively new and were only used on stationary bikes when I was stationed on my last ship. They’re a pair of Nashbar shorts and look very similar to the ones in Ray’s article above. I may have to look at getting some nicer shorts.

This morning it wasn’t as hard to get up but it wasn’t easy either. I still feel like I’m not getting enough sleep. I’m going to have to make a commitment to ensure I start getting 7+ hrs of sleep a night. I feel no ill effects from Ride 1 or 2 so I’m ready to get to it. As usual I down a bottle of water before leaving the house. Not sure it’s doing any good but I don’t think it’s bad either. I want to make sure I’m getting enough water.

While not nearly as nice as yesterday’s weather today’s isn’t bad. There were some high cirrus clouds filtering the moonlight and the temp was crisp again. Near the middle of the ride I ran into a little bit of ground fog but it didn’t hamper the riding at all.

It was tough to get up this morning. I had good intentions of going to bed early last night but wound up getting only about 5.5 hrs of sleep. Not good. As I lay there I caught myself trying to think of a way to sleep in and ride later. Again, not good. I forced myself to get up, drank a bottle of water, got dressed, and headed to the garage where my steed is housed. In that order. I know, the visual is kinda scary. Starting out my legs felt a little sluggish. Not unexpected since my first ride (Ride 1) in years was only two days old. Once I got the blood flowing, though, the legs started to feel ok.

So, I’m riding down the first long stretch of my short 10 mile loop when I realize what a beautiful morning it is. It’s about 5:15 and cool but not cold. Crisp is what I would call it. The sky is clear and there’s an awesome looking early-morning half-moon in the Southwest sky with Jupiter shining brightly not far away. I love the night sky. I’m a bit of an amateur astronomy buff as well.

Going along with my plan to slowly ease into it, today was a planned rest day.  I feel much better than I expected to with no noticeable effects from the ride yesterday.  I had no soreness whatsoever except for a little in my neck later in the day.    All-in-all not bad.  As I ride more this week I expect it to get worse.

I do feel “better” today.  Is it psychological?  Maybe.