Bike my butt off day!

Why am I putting the date in the titles when the date is right there above the title? That's just plain silly!

Went to bed at 11.
Alarm went off at 5 - I vaguely remember turning it off and crawling right back in bed. At 5:30 I remembered the alarm going off and got up to set my 6 oclock alarm to 6:30. ... Then at 6 oclock I got up without the alarm.

I get to claim a clear success this morning!

I got up at 6, ate, played with stella, and rode my bike to work starting at 7:20(ish). I decided it is silly to drive my truck closer to Burke Gilman when that results in the hardest 2 miles of the ride being after work, after the bus ride. By riding an extra 6k at the beginning, I leave myself only an easy 1.5 k from the bus to home at the end of the day.

7:40 I hit the burke gilman. At first I let my legs dictate my velocity - I was averaging about 20k. I didn't want to burn out by pushing too hard early on, I needed to be at work by 9:20 and can't really afford to miss the morning meeting.

I pretty much completely zoned out - to the point where a bike passing me startled the crap out of me. I was daydreaming about what riding a bike used to be like as a kid - how my legs felt different, how I was confident back then that I could completely burn them going up a hill and have them recover by time I reached to bottom on the other side. I was on the flat and the memories started making me angry at my current fitness. I'm on the flat, going a measly 20kph and my legs are complaining? Screw this, lets see how much I can get away with pushing myself. I still don't want to push so hard I burn out and gimp my total trip time, but I can do better than this.

So I started pushing myself. I found I could push up to about 25kph and while my legs would complain more, they weren't burning out. I kept pushing like this from approximately the 10k mark to the 25k mark. While I kept pushing all the way to marymoore, 25k is where I ran out of steam and despite pushing as hard or harder my velocity slowed to about 20k again. I was far enough along I was okay with this, the last 3k to marymoore was pretty brutal.

At marymoore I stopped and stretched for about 60 seconds and memorized what my computer said. Legs were pretty much maxed out, but no big deal as the next portion of the trip I was planning on walking anyway.

Biked the last k to 51st street, got off the bike, pressed the crosswalk button, and walked half of the remaining trip up the monster hill. ... monster... as a kid I would have laughed at how puny it is. I *will* laugh at how puny it is some day... Some day soon.

I walked in to my meeting, pushing my bike and wearing my helmet and wearing my obnoxious fat flashing neon yellow bike shirt at exactly 9:20. They had free bagles (even whole wheat ones - BONUS!) and I scarfed two of them and now feel like I ate too much.

Here are the stats - Both up to Marymoore park, and the entire trip.

Marymoore Park
1:31:31 hours
20.4 Average k/h
31.24 k

Entire Ride
1:54:32 hours <-- I bet I beat this time every single future ride.
18.2 Average k/h
34.85 k (21 miles)

I figure it was 1k more of trail from marymoor to 51st which means that 75% of the trip is entirely off roads. When I start doing round trips I'll park at my friends which will mean 91% of the trip is all trail. Nice!
...........
It has been two and a half weeks since my last bike trip. I can claim being sick for 1.5 of those. I have a lot of work to reach my goal of two round trips by the end of this month. While I don't know if it is realistic to make that milestone, I am going to keep aiming at it and try to make it, and if I don't I am okay with that so long as I feel I have actually tried to hit the mark.

:)
Charles