I know this — and so do you. As the days are getting shorter, it is getting more difficult to squeeze in a reasonably long ride after work. I even left a bit early today so that I could get in at least a 2-hour ride before dusk. It meant I had to hustle changing and getting everything ready. I admit, I felt a little rushed. Did\u00a0I stretch? Hell, no. I was racing out the door with my helmet unstrapped and perched on my head and Scooter over my shoulder.<\/p>\n
I rolled out the driveway at a few minutes before 5:00. I had just about exactly 2 hours before the sun would dip behind the foothills. Still feeling a little pressure, I probably started off faster and with more intensity than my muscles liked.\u00a0 I tried to relax and find a nice “easy” rhythm, but unless I concentrated on relaxing, I found myself pushing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I planned a Carter Lake loop ride – but as I’ll explain in a minute, it got cut short. The modified ride this afternoon was up to the top of\u00a0 Carter Lake Dam. It is a short, 7.4 mile trip from my house to the top of the dam. Pretty much up-hill (of varying degrees) on the way out with a total of about 650′ elevation gain Most of that comes in the last 2 mile. There are a couple of switchbacks right before the top that really get your attention. That’s when I realized I should have spent more time warming up when I started out. I felt a slight strain behind my right knee as I was digging deep to avoid getting bogged down. Scooter’s gearing doesn’t provide me with a “granny gear” for steep climbing so I have to push some bigger gears than\u00a0I am used to\u00a0sometimes.\u00a0 Just so you know how big a change riding Scooter is from my last bike — Scooter has a compact double with the lowest gearing a 34 (front) x 28 (rear). My previous mount was a Giant TCR with a triple crank that was customized with mountain bike gears (lowest was 26 (front) x 34 (back)). I could literally “spin up a phone pole” with that bike! But, it was heavy and constantly needed tweaking! Overall, I am much <\/em>happier with Scooter!!<\/p>\n Back to the ride.\u00a0 I probably should have turned around as soon as I felt the tweak behind my knee. Did I? Hell, no! I did back it off a tad, and instead of continuing around the dam and down the backside as I had originally planned, I turned around at the top and cut my ride short (about in half!).<\/p>\n Today’s lesson —\u00a0 take the time to ride out slowly and give my body a chance to warm-up. Even if it means changing your goals for the day, or knocking a few miles off the route to make sure there’s time for a slow-start. In the end, you will enjoy the whole <\/em>ride more and you won’t spend time sidelined nursing minor injuries!<\/p>\n Guess I should go stretch now, eh? And maybe even put my leg up with an ice pack under my right knee….. sometimes the non-riding is the hardest part of the “ride”.<\/p>\n Stats for the ride:<\/strong> I know this — and so do you. As the days are getting shorter, it is getting more difficult to squeeze in a reasonably long ride after work. I even left a bit early today so that I could get in at least a 2-hour ride before dusk. It meant I had to hustle changing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-training_rides"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starfirefarm.com\/ride\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starfirefarm.com\/ride\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starfirefarm.com\/ride\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starfirefarm.com\/ride\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starfirefarm.com\/ride\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.starfirefarm.com\/ride\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38,"href":"https:\/\/www.starfirefarm.com\/ride\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions\/38"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starfirefarm.com\/ride\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starfirefarm.com\/ride\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starfirefarm.com\/ride\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nRide Time:1:02:11
\nDistance: 14.8 miles
\nAverage Speed: 14.3, Max: 35.6
\nHeartrate Monitor had a new battery…still didn’t work! UGH!
\nOdometer: 496<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"