4 posts tagged “biking”
I reached the 500K mark for the summer somewhere around the top of Baltimore Road this morning while getting in a 20K ride on my Hangman Hills loop. It was fun to start out by flying down Hatch Road, but it's a long uphill route the rest of the way. On the other hand it's a much more gradual climb than my daily afternoon commute back home from work and I've been getting smarter about using my lower gears and chainrings so it wasn't too trying. I ended up completing the loop in just under an hour and I was pretty happy with my overall average speed.
Overall I really like the loop because the roads aren't busy (or at least have a nice wide shoulder), but there is one terrible stretch after Perry where 57th curves around into Hatch and the shoulder is unpaved. I was doing fine until a block before our house when I carelessly hit a bad pothole on the edge of the pavement and just about ruined my front wheel. Thank goodness I have front suspension or that probably would have been it for my rim. Riding around Spokane and it's many crappy streets as much as I do, I have never regretted going with a suspended fork.
It was good to get back out on the road after minimal riding during the last five or six day span. I'm getting to the point where I feel like I've got to keep getting rides in even if I have the day off because I don't want to lose the fitness I've gained so far this summer. Riding regularly also helps me get that much closer to my goal of 1000K for the summer (hopefully before the end of August).
I decided to ride down to work via Bernard this morning and I was rewarded with my fastest time and average speed yet! I didn't start out trying to break any records, but as I began the descent north of 29th I realized that I could push my average up over 30km/h quite easily as I cruised down the hill at 40km/h for several long stretches. I felt really good and pushed the whole downhill in my highest gear. Once downtown, I headed north on Howard and caught my breath while waiting at the traffic lights. Center Court at Hoopfest was already setup so I lost a little time (and average speed) navigating Riverfront Park, but I was able to get back up over 30km/h on parts of the Centennial Trail. My final results were 22:06 total riding time and 29.4km/h average for a 10.78km ride.
In other commuting notes this will be the first week all summer that I've biked too and from work every day. Checking my log, I've never biked more than two consecutive days without a rest day and never more than three times in a week. Yesterday was kind of a hard day, but my legs feel good today. The ride home won't be easy, but I'm definitely looking forward to giving my legs a couple days off. I'm also taking July 4-6 off next week so I may have to get in some longer morning rides before the kids get up to keep my conditioning up without the usual commute to rely on.
Just when I was starting to develop a nice morning biking routine and a favorite morning route into work the City of Spokane closed a large portion of it for much needed repaving. Next summer it will be great to have Southeast Blvd and Sherman repaired, but in the meantime I'm kind of scrambling to figure out what I'm going to do.
I scoped out possible routes that pass through downtown this morning, but I didn't find much to my liking. I don't mind waiting at the occasional light for a minute or two, but sitting at a light every other block in the heart of downtown isn't very fun. A straight shot north on Howard street is probably the way to go in the morning. On the other hand, after looking at the map above for a while it occurs to me that Perry - Arthur to 2nd may be my most satisfactory alternative since it will allow me to use more of my preferred morning route.
In the interest of saving some gas and getting in better shape I've decided to do some regular bike commuting now that it's getting warmer. I picked up a new rear wheel rack a week ago so that I can haul some pannier style bags back there. In the past I've used a messenger bag to haul my stuff when biking, but I want to try a different and hopefully more comfortable approach this time around. I also got a basic bike computer to measure my speed and distance information and I'm looking forward to installing it this weekend.
My primary computer for work and home is a MacBook Pro and I'm somewhat loathe to take it with me on my bike. Though it's thin and light-weight with a great screen, it's width and depth make it a fairly sizable laptop. And most importantly, I really don't want to subject it to additional risk transporting it on my bike between work and home. To that end I've spent the last couple days fixing up my previous Mac, a 12" Aluminum PowerBook that had a failed hard drive.
It turns out that replacing the hard drive on a 12" PowerBook is much easier than the similarly sized 12" iBooks I've dealt with in the past. There are still a lot of screws to remove, but once you find and remove them all the case comes apart easily. I decided to go ahead and install the new Kubuntu Linux 7.04 beta as my operating system for the moment, but I may still go back to OS X Tiger on it when I start commuting regularly around the beginning of May. I'm going to give myself a few weeks to get comfortable with KDE and see how I like it.
I also still have to cobble together (or as a last resort purchase) a couple workable panniers to hang from the new rack so I actually have some place to put by computer, lunch and other essentials when I'm riding. I've got a couple old bags that I think I can potentially make work and I'm curious to hit up the local army surplus store to see what they might have. I've seen some good ideas on how to convert canvas army bags into workable panniers and I want to look into that angle as well.
