Wednesday, May 27, 2009

The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly.

Well, I'm using the title of one of my all time favorite movies for this post. I know it's been a loooonnnngggg time since my last post & for that I apologize. I have no one to blame but myself for that. Well, let's start with the good. I rode the American Diabetes Associtation's Tour de Cure on May 17th. The weather really wasn't looking that great, it had been raining most of the weekend & I thought it would be another year of riding in the rain. Riding in the rain really doesn't bother me as long as it's not pouring down rain, thundering, or lightning out. It was overcast the entire ride, but it seemed that the rain was going to hold off. I was riding with a good group of people & we were going at a good pace, each rider was taking a turn at the front & we were doing around a 20 mph average. I wanted to stay with this group, but Mother Nature had other ideas. I had to stop at a rest stop to use the rest room & lost the group. I then rode solo for about the the next 20-25 miles, passing people along the way. I invited them to hook on to me & I'd be more than willing to pull them with me, but most of them didn't want to ride at the pace I was riding at, which was cool with me. As I was on the way back to the start of the ride, I caught up with the group I had been riding with at the start of the ride. I hooked onto the back of the group & rode with them. I certainly felt stronger this year climbing than I had in the past couple of years. I was able to stay with the group on the climbs & there were some short, steep kickers on the way back. The rain, which had held off for most of the ride, started again with about 5 miles left on the route. It was a light & steady rain, nothing bad, so I just had to deal with it. I got back to the starting point, had my lunch, then the rain started to come down harder. I felt sorry for the riders still on the route, having to deal with the rain, but I was glad I wasn't one of them. All in all it was a good ride. My computer or their measure of the route may have been a bit off, because I did about 64 miles in what was supposed to be a 62 mile route. My average speed was 19.55 mph. I'm pleased with that, seeing as I didn't meet one of my target goals for this ride. Now it's time for the bad. I really only had one goal before this ride started & that was to get under 200 lbs. Needless to say I didn't meet that goal. I'm stuck at about 205 for some reason & can't seem to get off this plateau. I'm staying away from the junk food (as much as possible) & trying to eat better. I guess I'll have to figure out why I'm stuck here & get down to losing more weight. Now comes the ugly. A few weeks ago I did a week of leg spinning work on the bike. Ever since that week, my left knee has a tendency to become sore during a longer ride. It usually doesn't bother me for rides that are less than 2 hours, but anything longer than that & I start to feel it. I did feel it on the Tour de Cure. After about 2+ hours on the ride, I felt a slight pain in the knee, but it really wasn't that bad, at the time. Come about the 3 hour mark, I felt it a bit more. I just took some pain releiver for it after the ride was over & thought it would be fine. I rode the trainer on Tuesday following the Tour de Cure & could still feel some discomfort with the knee. I thought if I rested it the rest of the week, it would get better, but for some reason, it still was hurting throughout the week. I rode this past Memorial Day with some friends & after about 2+ hours, it started up again. I had to get a friend to give me a ride home since I didn't want to push it any further with a sore knee. I'm going to have the guys at Epic Bikes check out my position on the bike to see if it needs any kind of adjustment which might be causing the knee to hurt. Well that's about all I have for now, thanks to everyone who reads this & I'll do my best not to be so lazy & post more often.

No comments: