Ride my bike every day for 30 days

I did it, i managed to ride my bike every single day for 30 straight days. Only one day was I not able to go outside because of rain and then I put the bike on the trainer and still rode.

This also marks the 30 day goal of my wife anticloud. This morning we weighed and measured ourselves to compare with the numbers from day one.

I lost 4lbs.

Waist: 3 inches
Butt: 1.5 inches
Thigh: 2 inches
Calf: 1 inch
Chest: 1 inch
Bicep: 1 inch

My waist size and my weight I have not seen this low since the early days of high school in the early 90’s!!!
Now my wife and I will go out this evening to Carraba’s for celebration dinner.

The bike numbers:

25.04 miles
1:38 hrs.

The numbers for the month are even better now:

439.88 miles
31:41 hrs

Nice.

Accomplishment…..tastes good…..mmmmmmmmmmmmmm!

The end is in sight!!

Only one more day until my 30 day goal is accomplished!! And then…..well there is the key. I am not sure where this will take me next. Waking up and getting moving and going out on the bike has become part of the daily routine, one of my favorite parts. Once I have accomplished this goal I believe that I will still be riding most everyday.

Now it will be time to start bringing in other part of a fitness program. I will be doing some sort of strength training 3 days par week on top of the cycling. On those days the riding will only be up to about thirty minutes or less, which is a good warm up for my body in preparation of muscle building exercises.

The numbers:

15.18 miles
1:04 hrs.

A beautiful morning with neither rain nor many clouds. The temperature was around 80 and humidity around 70%. It definitely felt good out there with the fresh air blowing as I rode through it. Never mind the various cars and trucks and their exhaust of which they are so flatulent with. My thick northern blood has adapted fairly well to the warmer and more humid southern climate these last 10 years. Personally I would prefer a more temperate climate with neither extreme highs nor extreme lows.

I have taken to listening to my iPod during these morning rides. Before anyone says it…I know. We have all seen the idiots riding a bike blindly talking on their cell phone or listening to headphones and not paying attention to anything around them. Let my put your fears at rest, I always pay attention to other vehicles when I am riding. I do not have the volume turned up enough to keep me from hearing vehicles approaching from the rear.

I have many years of experience riding with traffic and I have done much research about riding safely and I ride accordingly. My riding experience has been on all types of surfaces andtraffic environments. I have ridden the roads up in Montana and the downtown of Boston at night. Also the roads in between and out toward the geography of nowhere of the suburbs and exurbs. Throw in for good measure every type of multi-user type of path both paved and non paved varieties. Then there was the off road back woods paths of the mountains and wooded areas of OH,Va. andWV., NC, and SC and other areas that I have lived and ridden a bike.

The one hour ride has turned out to be the magic number for podcasts that I want to listen to. The NPR program This American Life, which I used to love to listen to on the radio when I was out driving more in the past, is available as podcasts. I have also downloaded various programs like Word for Word, which is authors reading and speaking about their work. Also some poetry ones and some other miscellaneous things.

Things are continuing well on the bike ride front now that I was able to replace the faulty tube that was in the rear tire. Only two more days until i reach the magic 30 day mark!!

The numbers of the day:

15.32 miles
1:05 hrs.

Day 27

The weather report is calling for rain as it was yesterday, and yesterday rain it did yesterday but not until later in the afternoon. Today in the morning it was calling for 30% chance of scattered thunder showers. Luckily none of that happened to be where I was riding. In my neck of the woods it was sunny and quite nice.

Today was only slightly problematic with the tire that had gone flat the other day. I believe that it might have a very slight pinch flat from not seating properly when I hastily changed the tube the other day. It managed well for most of the ride and did not go entirely flat but lost much of it’s air so that it was noticeable and affected safe handling. I was able to stop and use the mini-pump to try and top off the inflation for the last mile or two to get home which I did without mishap. At some point today I will spend time going over the bike and doing some cleaning and basic upkeep, which will include patching of the tube if I can find the hole in the tube and a patch kit in my bucket of bike stuff.

The numbers:

15.05 miles
1:05 hrs

The ride this morning was definitely much better than the truncated one yesterday. Today I had no flat tire and rode a while longer to make up for the lack of biking yesterday.

I don’t know where exactly this turned into biking for at least 1 hour every day for 30 days. The original was just “Ride my bike everyday for 30 days”, which would still have been fine, even with the shortened ride yesterday.

Riding for at least one hour is just such a nice round-ish goal to aim for on a daily basis. Once the thirty days are up I’m not sure what is going to happen to this. The one hour “rule” will probably fall by the wayside, but I am thinking that I will still want to try some riding everyday, and even more on some days.

The next step in this process of building up the Zenkrak is looking like it will involve some weight/resistance type exercises. This is something that will be worked in on a three day per week schedule. I think that on the days with weight/muscle building training I will still ride but for a shorter time, perhaps only 30-ish minutes. Then I will be home and onto the more stationary exercise thing. It is mostly a matter of coming up with the routine that I will use. I feel that my legs are getting enough with the biking so I will concentrate on upper body and core/trunk exercises.

Well, back to the task at hand then.

The numbers:

1:24 hrs.
20.59 miles

“20”
It is a nice round number. Eighteen or fourteen is just such an awkward amount. Twenty just sits more comfortably. It gives one the sense of accomplishing much more that one actually has.

It makes me smile.

This morning the ride started out nicely as usual. Only 4…something miles out while blindly riding over a pile of random road debris and car droppings…thud....hissssssssssss…...hisssssssssssssssss. the dreaded blow out flat tire.

Luckily it was only a matter of yards to pull into the parking lot of the local Jehovah’s Witness place thing. Being the nearly always prepared former boy scout that I am I had a spare tube, pump, and tire levers with which to perform parking lot surgery on the machine.

It has been a while since I needed to change a flat…probably more that a year. Hey, I’ve got Continental city tires with puncture guard in the compound and I keep the tires properly inflated so as to avoid as much as possible roadside annoyances. Unfortunately one is not always lucky in flat tire roulette.

So i got the tube changed and tire inflated but had to head home by that time. I had to be back home for my weekly work conference telephone call by 9:00am. Then the day was going to lunch with my mom and great aunt who are visiting. After that we managed to have an hour rest before going out with them for a dinner cruise around Charleston harbor area which was amazingly nice.

Tomorrow i plan on riding 1.5+hrs to make up for my shortness today.

Today’s numbers:

38 min.
8.86 miles

I’ll be back in the saddle tomorrow.

Day 24

Another freakishly beautiful morning here in South Carolina. Freakish in that the sun was coming up in a blue sky with only scattered puffy clouds and no rain. There has only been one day since I have started this 30 trial in which the weather was not cooperative and I couldn’t go out for a ride. On that day I rode 30 fairly intense minutes on a stationary trainer indoors. I know what you are saying, that I should not complain, that I’m lucky,etc…I know. But this weather pendulum will swing the other direction to the other end where it is as bad as it has been nice. And when that happens…well we will just wit and see.

Well today I will spare you the random flights that my mind can wander off to in these entries and stick with …

The numbers:
15.27 miles
1:04 hrs

It is really nice to wake up and get my things together and just ride. What a way to start the day! When I get back I feel relaxed and ready for my day right off. I come in and put my bike in the spare room and then come out and get the coffee started. At that time my wife is usually getting toward the end of her morning routine. Hereis her feed on 43 Things. She has been supportive of this endeavor through out.

There has been a time or two when I just didn’t want to go out. You know how it goes…I don’t have to, I can miss one day and it will be fine. All fine and dandy but then he 30 day commitment/trial will have failed and it would have to begin again at day 1. Anticloud has been very supportive. She smiles at me through sleepy eyes in the morning when i lean down to give her a “See you in an hour” kiss.

Motivation is a funny thing that way. I can get myself out to do random things like this on my own but it is easier to give up when you have no one to help encourage you and to keep you somewhat accountable. Also, it is just means so much more when you accomplish a goal and your partner is there to help you in your celebratory little victory dance. Then when you are, in turn, supportive and helpful you can see the joy in their eye as they accomplish their goal and you can join them in celebration.

Now I am ready to tackle my day and it’s activities. Today I will finish reading Stranger Than Fiction, by Chuck Palahniuk, and perhaps begin something else. Soon Into the Wild, the novel should be here, which I am looking forward to after seeing the movie. I know that I will be doing some work at some point today, more than likely it will be done in a few spurts through out the day. And then this evening I have a telephone interview to conduct for work.

Blah, blah, blah….onto the day

Day 23

A good morning was had on the bike. This morning things just seemed to mesh well while on the ride. It wasn’t that I was riding particularly fast or hard or that I was doing intervals with sprinting, etc. Rather things just felt good and right. This state of mind has no term in our language to convey these feelings correctly.

I was feeling part of the flow of it all perhaps…I don’t know, language has failed me. Again, the morning was beautiful, the traffic was tolerable, my bicycle was working well for once, nothing particularly out of the ordinary, yet it was. Perhaps it is my body and mind just realizing how magical (for lack of a better term) it all just is when life is just….well, just itself. That, I believe, is the issue many of us have with this life. We are always looking for the next greatest moment/thing/experience/what have you.

Greatest, biggest, shiniest, fanciest, prettiest, strongest, fastest…..what ever “-est” we happen to be chasing at that moment. We all, myself included at times, get caught up in this life by viewing it as a race. A race, though, that has no big photo finish with winners and losers no matter what anyone has told you. That is right, no matter what anyone has told you. Think about it and figure out the subtleties yourself.

Watch, and listen to yourself quietly and carefully, and see how many of the core thoughts and beliefs that you have are generally other people’s words and not something you have discovered the truth of yourself. That is not to say that all of what you hear and have been taught over your life is false, rather you need to ask “why?”. Or “How?”. Why is someone telling you something is such and such a way. How did this person come to this conclusion for themselves?

There we will end the random brain sqeezings of the after dinner mind and move on to….

The Numbers: (for biking this morning)

15.18 miles
1:01 hrs.

In seven more days, at the 30 day mark, I will go back over all of the numbers and give the totals. Also I should have some measurements since my wife got my waist, weight , leg circumference, and misc. measures at the beginning.

All those numbers should definitely play into the aforementioned predisposition of many for the “-est” and “-er” aspects of this endeavor.

I am in the home stretch of this 30 day trial. This was something that I had no doubt of my ability to complete, rather it was something that I needed to do. Talking about consistency in thoughts and actions is one thing, but it is another to actually follow through on the words in my own life.

That is the key in this whole endeavor in my mind….follow through. Big plans and big words are fantastic, they are the meat and potatoes of our imaginations. The fertilizer of fertile fields in the mind, ripe with the possibilities of the future.

Words, in all of their permutations, have been the basis and the beginning of all human endeavors. Whether they be the words of plans on paper or whether they be the furtive hushed whispers of lovers plotting a romantic tryst, or the flights of imaginary fancy follies taken by the dreamers among us.

Words, thoughts, prayers, what have you. It is through these that we can externalize our inner world, our inner selves. It is how we can expose these thoughts to the light of day and perhaps see them in a different light at the same time. They can be exposed for their brilliance, or their banality. But if they are not brought out they are just impotent possibilities. They must be brought out on paper, on bits and bytes of a blog, or in the air as words for the ears and mind of another, for then they can begin the possible journey from dream to reality.

It is our duty to ourselves, and the ones that we love, to make our dreams a reality and thus make this life worth living and not just enduring.

Alright, here are the numbers for the day:

14.54 miles
1:03 hrs.

Eight more days. I wonder what 30 trial I might come up with next. I will continue my cycling, just perhaps not so militant about not missing a missed day here and there

The plop, pitter, pla-dunk of the rain on the plastic skylight in the bathroom is kind of soothing. At least this morning it wasn’t raining when I went out for day 21 of riding earlier. This morning my body and mind decided it wanted to sleep in a while, at least until 10 something I think it was. I very rarely do that any longer and it did feel good and I was still able to do my bike ride.

The numbers:
13.75 miles
1:01 hrs.

Consistency is the key in all this and it is working out well. Today the body is a little tired but it is a good kind of tired. It is not one of those achy what the hel did I do to myself kind of tired spells. I am feeling relaxed and pretty at ease which is quite nice.