Archive for category Bicycling

Ok so this trip had to be captured in two pieces. In defense of the application that crashed – I did just install an update and didn’t reboot my phone, which I normally do when I update all the apps. just in case. At any rate this trip was fantastic today, so far times continue to get better. This evening was later than I normally ride so it was slightly cooler than it has been.

Part 1 – the first 6.5 miles – average speed 13.8 Mph – time 00:28:17
Part 2 – the remaining 5.8 miles – average speed 14.4 Mph – time 00:24:24
Total trip – 12.3 miles – average 14.1 Mph – time 00:52:41

Day 8 after work part 1

Plan your trips with EveryTrail iPhone Travel Guides

Day 8 trip home part 2

Plan your trips with EveryTrail iPhone Travel Guides

This was the morning trip to work day 6.
As of this morning – 112.5 miles. A full week both directions will be 125 miles but I started in the afternoon on the first day so I didn’t ride both directions that day.

It’s getting easier every day and my recovery time is much faster. My legs are still a little achy now 4 hours after getting off the bike but even that will stop in another week and will be replaced by a large amount of energy. It’s probably because I push myself just slightly harder every day as my endurance grows.

My appetite is beginning to grow as well so today I stocked up on wraps and lunch meats and cheese along with a good supply of fruits. So starting tomorrow my breakfast will be a whole grain cereal and a banana, then a healthy wrap for lunch (Tomato wrap) with turkey, pepperoni, havarti cheese, lettuce, onion, light mayonnaise and a dash of spices. In between I brought carrots from the farmer’s market and a fresh orange. I’ll try to eat healthy snacks in between meals like fruits and vegetables, but NO PROMISES! I do love my salty snacks! I don’t think indulging a couple of times a week is not such a big deal.

I am going to start keeping a journal of my daily diet and exercise activities along with unhealthy things so that as I replace the unhealthy with the healthy I can look back and see the changes it makes in my attitude and overall mental, physical and emotional health. For example I have a beer or two almost every day and the day I started riding I weighed in at 174 pounds. That’s almost the heaviest I’ve ever been! At 5′ 8″ most doctors would say I am healthy and average as far as the weight. But I want to be far above average personally in every aspect of my life. So the goal is a lean and muscular 155 lbs. Not a flabby 170 lbs.

Trail to work Day 6

Map your trip with EveryTrail

I’m riding a Trek SingleTrack mountain bike with off-road tires so the workout is a little harder than a regular street bike. I am looking forward to getting a street bike later this year, perhaps by next spring and can’t wait to see the difference in my times.

This trail was captured on my iPhone using GPS but I haven’t used the app in several months so it needed an update before I could start capturing my path which delayed the start of the capture by about 10 minutes and about 2 miles. My actual trip was right at about 55 minutes and the distance is actually about 12.5 miles. Today was my fourth day of riding, I started last Wednesday after work and as of today I’ve been 75 miles in four and a half work days. I didn’t ride over the weekend.

I’ll put up my results this evening after my trip home from work and we’ll see what the difference is after working all day. Of course I’m a computer programmer so it’s not like I will be physically tired from my day’s work.

Trail to work

Map your trip with EveryTrail

For those of you who know me well you know that I am not necessarily a fitness fanatic. My wife is definitely an avid fitness proponent and evangelist, but I am more the type of person that does things only when necessary and only if it serves some kind of purpose other than just “buffing my bod”!

That’s why I like bicycling so much. It’s definitely a great way to exercise and get’s you from point A to point B in a rather timely fashion, while giving your body the healthy activity it needs. Of course when I do things I like to fully engage! So I’ve started riding my bike again to and from work. As long as rain isn’t expected for the day I’ll be riding to and from work every day, which is great because it’s just close enough to make the trip in about an hour and far enough away to get a really good workout. 12.5 miles each way, currently I am riding at one hour exactly. First day took me about an hour and twenty minutes of course. But as I ride my body remembers how to ride. So in the past three days I will have gone 62.5 miles at an average of about 12 mph!

This is approximately my path to and from – I’ll be posting some of my results as I capture them.

This was last summer – but my office is not far from the end of the path.
Day 7 Upper Tampa Trail at EveryTrail

Map your trip with EveryTrail

Day 7…
I didn’t go out yesterday becuase I had an interview in the morning and I really regretted it! I was really straining this morning trying to keep pace.
We only did the main part of the trail today so it was only about 20 miles, but we got it done in and hour 37 minutes.

Day 7 Upper Tampa Trail

Widget powered by EveryTrail: Travel Community

This is the fifth day biking the Upper Tampa trail. On our first day it took about 2.5 hours to do the full trail from the house in Carrollwood Village to the end of the Upper Tampa Trail at Memorial Highway. Now after only 5 days of riding we’ve reduced our time to 2 hours making our average speed around 12 Mph. We’re going to try to get our average speed somewhere around 15 Mph by the end of next week then we’ll see if we can find a path up to the Suncoast Trail. They still have to pave the 4 miles or so between the two trails. The Suncoast trail runs all the way from Lutz Lake Fern Road to the northern end of Suncoast Parkway aproximately 40 miles. So from the house in Carrollwood to the northern end of the Suncoast trail is approximately 50 miles. We’d like to be able to do the entire trail round trip 100 miles by the time it starts getting cold this year.

Day 5 Upper Tampa

Widget powered by EveryTrail: Geotagging Community