So I have been trying to get out on a weekend for a longer bike ride for awhile now. But it seems like things just seem to always come up that take precedence, and so it has taken until now to get out.

Under threat of rain, I headed out about 6:30 pm over to the Little Miami bike trail. I was planning on heading up to Morrow (Tomorrow! Tomorrow! it’s only a daaaay away), but after looking at some mileages, it became apparent that I would not be able to make it there and back before dark (or at least it would be close). So I decided to try for a 30-mile ride. Plus, since Carolyn had just run her first 5K (3.1 miles), I figured 3 and 1 were the numbers of the day, so I was going for a 31 mile bike ride.

I drove out to Miamiville and parked there (noticing that they have removed the port-a-potty that used to be there), and headed out. I was feeling pretty good – going out around 17-18 mph. I hadn’t quite decided where I was going to turn around, but ended up going to the 32.0 mile marker. That was 15.5 miles, in 57:24.15, for a speed of 16.2 mph. I turned around and kept going, for about another mile or so before stopping at a park in South Lebanon.

The ride back was definitely harder. It shouldn’t be surprising since I was tired. I did all right at first, but then was definitely hurting. I really wanted to stop in Loveland for another break, but I willed myself on (5 more miles, 5 more miles!) A bit south of there, I realized that it might be possible to finish in under 2 hours if I could keep up ~15 mph for the final stretch. Alas, it was not meant to be. The final 15.7 miles (not sure why it was different out and back) was done in 1:03:33.51, for 14.8 mph. Final totals, 31.2 miles in 2:00:57.66, 15.5 mph.

So, keeping in mind my goal of 1000 miles of exercise for the year, this of course helps quite a bit. My last 3 weeks I’ve had no cycling, and my running totals have been 2, 11 and 6 miles. This week had 3.6 miles running and 40.4 miles cycling.

That puts my year-to-date totals at Running: 122.0 miles, Cycling: 300.2 miles, and Swimming: 4.9 miles for a total of 427.1 miles. I have somewhere around 21 weeks left in the year, so that means I need to do 27.3 miles per week. I think I need to step it up a notch.