Went out biking again this morning. I know all 3 of you are probably bored to death with these recaps but nevertheless here goes. Actually, I always seem to have trouble when I’m searching my blog trying to find posts like these, so pardon me while I bike every street bicycle ride training Madeira.

This morning I am aiming to be my last training run before I bike home from work on the 21st, unless there are babial issues. I did just over 13 miles in just over an hour, averaging out to ummmm about 13 miles per hour. Actually, to be technical, it was 13.17 miles in 1:04:41, which is about 12.2 miles.

There were a lot of good hills on this route. Starting off was a good one coming up Drake Ave. I believe I calculated the grade (total climb divided by length of the climb) somewhere around 4%. For comparison, according to this site – 2% grade does not seem very steep, but it’s enough to substantially reduce forward speed, and for most riders it will absorb more than half their power output, while 6% grade is enough to cut speed to well under half, and absorb more than 80% of a rider’s power output (leaving less than 20% to fight air resistance and rolling friction). So somewhere between that. Also a good hill at the end of N Clippinger Drive and pretty much throughout the ride.

One interesting thing happened right at the start on Drake. Indian Hill HS is on Drake, and at the time I was riding (7:15ish), it was just about school starting time. That made the road a little bicycle unfriendly, since it was somewhat narrow and I had several school buses whizzing by me. But interestingly enough, right at the high school I actually got to ride in the flow of traffic. Because of all the people turning into the HS, traffic was slow enough that I was able to ride right with it. Actually, several times I had to stop, which also reduced my overall speed. While my cyclometer doesn’t count time when you’re stopped, when you’re barely moving at 2-3 mph, it does track time. I also got to ride with the flow of the traffic coming down the hill from Shawnee Run back into Madeira on Miami Ave.

I am interested to see how fast I ride on the bike trail. My overall average speed suffers on rides like the one this morning, because I do a lot of turning around in cul-de-sacs and such. So in theory when I’m riding a more straight route, I should be able to ride faster. Maybe 14-16 mph? We’ll see.

Another thing to note – my cyclometer also measures the max speed. Mine for the ride was 28.5 mph. And while I’m not entirely sure WHERE it was, it seems likely that it was in a residential area, in which case I was BREAKIN THE LAW, BREAKING THE LAW, BREAKIN THE LAW LAW LAWWWWWWWWWWWW. Actually I’m fairly sure it was coming back down the hill on the aforementioned N Clippinger.

Also had some chain problems – it seemed like it kept popping out of the sprocket / derailleur. And yes, I did just want to use the word “derailleur”, in all its Frenchy goodness. I’m not sure what the deal is there. It wasn’t too big of a problem, but it was annoying to have to get off my bike (twice) to pop the chain back in. PS – if you’re not sure what a derailleur is, I didn’t just throw that link in for my health people.

In any case, I feel good and am excited for the commute home on Thursday

Oh by the way, it’s super double coupons again this week. Meijer sure does seem to have a knack for scheduling them at very inconvenient weeks for me. At least we’re (almost) out of former Presidents to die this week. A sentence which will hopefully not get me arrested.