This has been an interesting week. I’ve struggled with lack of motivation during the middle of the week, but back on my game at the end of the week.

I was a little worried getting back on my bike after a week off due to being sick. It went fine ~ I thought I would have some ground to make up, but found I hadn’t lost much after a week.

I got a few good rides in, including some wind intervals at the park this week. I enjoyed a delightful group ride today in Wichita. It was really fun to finally meet Robert from RiverCityCyclist.com, and some other people from his facebook group.

It was also my first group ride. I am used to being out here riding alone (unless I have Hanna in the trailer). It was really fun to have people to talk to and ride with. I look forward to the next group ride.

The other thing I noticed was it was much easier to take a slower pace with the group. When I ride alone I tend to just ride all out, which is not always what I want ~ especially when I’m doing an endurance ride. It was really nice to feel what a leisurely ride felt like today.

My hubby also went with us ~ I trailered Hanna. It was fun to ride with him, because the last time we rode together he left me in the dust and I didn’t seem him until he was on his way back lol. Today he managed to stick with the pack, and hang with me and Hanna, and that was fun.

Goals for this week:

Next Sunday is the Walnut Valley Metric. YES!! Already!! This morning my husband asked me ~ do  you really think you’re ready. NICE. Way to have some confidence there hubby.

YES. I do feel like I’m ready ~ in fact, I feel like I’m ready enough to do the 65 mile route, but don’t know if I will or not. I think hubby is coming with me, and while I’m sure he could do it as well, I’m not sure he is as confident.

I’ve heard the rule of thumb is you can do 3X the most miles you’ve done. He’s regularly riding 20 miles, so I think he could do it no problem. We’ll just have to wait and see I guess.

The other issue is finding someone to watch the little monkey. I’m NOT trailering her for 35 OR 65 miles lol. I think my mom will be able to watch her, but that’s in my goals for the week ~ to find a place for her to hang while I’m riding that day.

Anyway ~ the rest of the week.

My plan is to just ride some low key rides through the week. I’m not doing intervals this week.

I’m thinking ~ if it’s not raining tomorrow morning I’m gonna throw the bike on the back of the car and ride back from Caldwell after I drop Hanna off, which means I will have to ride back to pick her up. That will be 20 miles ~ but with a big break in the middle.

Other than that, just some longish rides through the week.

I do plan to take Friday and Saturday off?? Maybe?

A nice Pasta dinner on Saturday night. Thinking we’ll have Shrimp Marinara ~ mmm… my favorite. Gotta love feeding your body for a long ride.

Have an amazing week!

What a week. I got sick early last week. I thought it was just allergies but it quickly blossomed into a nasty sinus thing. I was completely out of energy and was lucky to get off the couch for most of the week.

I was feeling better by yesterday, thank heaven, since it was our annual trip to the Kansas State Fair, and my daughter has been looking forward to it for about 364 days. We had a blast, and if you’d like to see a little of the fun from the fair feel free to check out the pics.

While I was waiting for Hanna to ride the big Ferris Wheel with her grandma I noticed Montgomery Gentry’s bus over by the grandstand. It happened to have a bike strapped to the back. I thought that was AWESOME!! I couldn’t resist taking a picture to share with you all.

Today I am feeling much better, but still having trouble with the energy levels so I’m just taking it easy. My plan is to get back on the bike tomorrow. I am going to take it easy the first day and see how much I can handle. I would like to get back up to speed with my workouts.

The Walnut Valley ride is only 2 weeks from today on the 27th, and I really want to be ready.  I’m hoping this week off hasn’t been a complete set back in my fitness. I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.

Goals for the week:

• Get back on the bike and take a nice 10 mile ride if I can.

• Do a couple interval workouts ~ whether it’s hills, or wind we’ll see what the weather provides.

• Do a long endurance ride next weekend ~ if we don’t ride in the Wakita Lions Club Ride (if we do I guess that will count for my long ride.)

• Weight train 2 days this week, including core workout.

That’s the goals for this week ~ I guess we’ll see how it goes.

photo credit: Per Ola Wiberg (Powi)

Since I’m now logging my workouts at Daily Mile I thought I would cut back my daily ride posts and do a week in review. I hope to set some weekly goals, and each week review the goals, where I met them, fell short, and what I want to work on next week.

This week I didn’t really have any goals set other than getting all my workouts in. I had planned on 2 interval workouts, 2 recovery workouts and an endurance workout. I also planned on two weight training/core workouts.

Monday I did my first hill repeat workout ~ it went pretty good. I didn’t push it super hard, since it was my first time. I did a 4x workout. The hills I chose were just about 1/2  mile long.

Tuesday I did my core workout ~ dug out my Core Secrets dvd, and did the Fundamentals workout. I love working on the ball, and this dvd was nice for a full body workout all while getting a good core workout too.

Wednesday I went out and the wind was blowing something fierce. I ended up getting overwhelmed by it and only rode a little more than 5 miles. One of my goals is going to be getting my head and body around the wind.

Thursday we went to the track and did intervals on the track. I ended up doing 6 repetitions. It was a really good workout and I felt great afterwards. I ended up riding 10 miles for the whole workout.

Friday I did another round of Core Secrets ~ this time I did the 25 minute full body workout. Another good full body and core workout. Loving the ball.

Saturday the day got totally away from me. It looked like it was going to rain so I kept putting off my ride ~ ended up pruning the rose bushes and weeding my garden (realized the weeds were so tall I couldn’t see off the porch. oops). Went to a birthday party in town and got back too late to go out for a ride.

Sunday woke up pumped for a nice long ride. Did the “big loop”. It’s this loop I envisioned myself doing, but only a couple weeks ago thought there was no way I would ever make it. I did it today in just a couple hours. It ended up being 28 miles. I felt good during, and good afterward. The ride was beautiful, the sunflowers are in full bloom, farmers were harvesting their fields, the wind was only so slight. A great feeling of power,  gratitude and amazement.  I also helped my husband build my garden shed today, which was a LOT of heavy lifting ~ didn’t know all that was going to be involved lol.

Next week I’d like to work on increasing my miles about 10%, which is hard since I don’t really have a pre set amount of miles I plan to ride ~ so maybe that’s the first goal. I’d like to be doing at least 10 miles for my intervals, 15 for my recovery rides and 30 for my endurance ride.

For my intervals/hill rides this week I would like to accept the challenge to ride into the wind. I’m sure I’ll have the opportunity for windy rides. So for at least one interval ride this week I’d like to use the wind for it.

That’s my week in review!! If you have cycling goals for the week I’d love to hear them, feel free to drop them in the comment section.

photo credit: Eric Perrone

Today was a family ride ~ I had plans for an endurance ride looking to go 20 miles.  Ryan was riding a long ride for the first time, and I was towing Hanna as well.

I took a different route than usual because I wanted to head into the wind on the way out ~ which means I had to go north first, that way I could have the wind at my back on my way back home.

The wind really kicks my ASS. I don’t think the wind was blowing very hard ~ but now that I check it is blowing 9 -17mph, which probably isn’t that strong (considering this IS Kansas ~ but hard enough).  I ended up spinning in a low gear just trying to keep moving forward, I was going at a snail’s pace but I was still moving.

Ryan was following and at some point I told him if he wanted to go faster he could pass us. He did, and I didn’t see him again lol.  (would have been nice to know that, so I could have brought my mp3 player so I could have had something to focus on besides how much harder it was than I expected lol) There were some gorgeous fields of sunflowers to look at along the way which was nice.

At about mile 6 Hanna decided she needed a potty break ~ so we went down a little ditch and she did her business. It happened to be a the bottom of a very long hill. I got back on my bike thinking how much it was gonna suck to restart at the bottom of a hill ~ however, it seemed the little break was just what my legs needed and I was able to get to the top of the hill with relatively  little trouble.

I finally made it to the turn around point ~ having seen Ryan on his way back a while back  lol. I love riding with the wind at my back. It would have been a lot more fun if I hadn’t had the trailer after about 15 mph it got a little squirrely back there, and I didn’t want to crash us out.

I was able to use the big front gear on my bike for the first time ~ which is an accomplishment.  I kept a much better pace on the way back, but seriously began to suffer from crotch pain, and foot pain about 13 miles into the process. This hasn’t happened before on this bike so I was a little surprised I was having so much pain. I think it may have had something to do with pulling the trailer ~ I’m still doing a little more research on that.

I really planned on going a few more miles to make it to 20 today, but was just in too much pain by the time we got to the car to even think about passing it and going the 2 extra miles. Ah well ~ next time.

All in all it was a nice ride. A HUGE accomplishment. I’m really proud of myself for pulling Hanna and not quitting when I thought I might. Yay me.

One last thing ~ My total miles went over 100 miles today!! woo hoo!!

Today’s Stats:

Miles Biked: 16
Towing Hanna: yes
Weather: sunny, 70′s, wind 9-17mph
Time of Day: midday
Time on bike: 1 hr 30 min

photo credit: Andrea Balducci

Yesterday I took the day off from my bike, but I did work out. I did a quick round of Power 90 ~ and every time I’m surprised by how much it kicks my butt. Literally, my butt is killing me today. Those lunges and squats. YOUCH.

I had an easy recovery ride scheduled for today so I decided to go anyway.

I figured I’d go 5 to 10 miles slow and easy.

Got on the bike and started rolling, it was so easy, my legs didn’t hurt. My speed was higher than average, and it still felt like I was going easy.

Hey Jackie ~ You live in Kansas.

I turned around just before the first good sized hill, and thank heaven I did. I turned into this killer headwind. No wonder going out had seemed so easy lol.

My speed slowed considerably, my legs started hurting a little by the end, but the interesting thing was it was none of the sore muscles I was using ~ how does that happen?

Here are some things I felt really good about as I was riding today.

1. On the way back I was doing an excruciatingly slow 8mph. I looked down and realized just a few short weeks ago I wa PROUD to be going 8mph and didn’t think I could go much faster than that.

2. Kansas is particularly beautiful on days like these.

3. When I feel good riding it affects all areas of my life ~ because the energy state of feeling good riding my bike is the same energy state of feeling good when I get huge paypal deposits, and like attracts like, so feeling good on my bike actually allows more money too

4. Even if you pedal in a low gear, as slow as you want you still keep moving forward. You don’t have to force it, it just happens.  (same seems to be true with hills and LIFE!!)

5. I was the only thing moving myself forward ~ me ~ I AM the POWER!!

So it was a nice recovery ride that was a little harder than I expected/wanted/anticipated, but it was a nice ride anyway, and lots of good thoughts found their way into my head too.

Today’s stats:

Miles ridden: 8
Time of day: 11am or so
Time on the bike: 43 min
Weather: windier than I thought it was ~ mid 70s and sunny

photo credit: c-66

I have been getting some great advice from the ladies over at The Team Estrogen forums. If you are looking for a great cycling forum for women you should definitely stop by. Anyway, we recently were talking about the different types of training rides Interval, Endurance and Recovery. They helped me put together a bit of a training schedule, with the three types mapped out through the week.(although this week has been all out of whack and I haven’t quite followed the daily schedule)

Today I did an endurance ride. I ended up doing my longest ride yet ~ 20 miles. I pushed it a little harder than I do for long easy rides. I ended up keeping my speed around 12 mph. In fact, my average speed for the whole ride was 12.2mph. The route I took has some hills, nothing huge, but hills nonetheless. I am quite surprised how much easier the hills are already from a week or two ago.

The ride ended up taking me 91 minutes, which I was pretty excited about.  There was a point not too long ago I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready to do a 35 mile ride next month. Now I know I can do it, and I’m looking more at how long I want it to take me to get it done.

I was talking to hubby the other day about the ride and he thought it should take me about 3 hours. I told him he was crazy I was thinking more like 4 or 5, but after today I think I probably will be able to do it in 3 hours ~ at least that’s the new goal.

Today’s stats:

Miles: 20
Weather: VERY humid, not much wind mid 70s
Time: 91 min
Type of Ride: Endurance

Today was supposed to be my off day, however, hubby really wanted to take his bike out, and Hanna wanted to go too, so we went out for our first family ride.

I pulled Hanna in the trailer and we took a slow and easy 5 miles. The headwind on the way out was pretty strong. My legs were pretty sore too, but after a mile or so my legs got warmed up, though not so much that I wanted to take a long ride.

It was really nice to ride with someone ~ this is my first ride with someone other than Hanna. Nice to have someone to talk to. All in all a nice little family ride.

Miles biked: 5
Weather: winds from south 15mph ~ mid mid 80s
Time: didn’t notice

photo credit: Caitlin House

I was a bit sore today after 2 of my longest rides in a row. I was thinking I’d just blow it off today, but that damn bike. It just sits there ~ calling to me ~ come on Jackie, just a couple miles, come on PULEEEEEZE.

And today was one of those quintessentially perfect Kansas days. Sunny, light breeze, high 70s at the time of my ride and no humidity ~ which you *have* to take advantage of!

So I put my riding clothes on and put the bike on the back of the car and drove to the end of the road. My hubby drove down to Oklahoma City last night and picked up a nice little Giant for himself ~ there were leftover PRINGLES in my car when I got in ~ well I think it would have taken a will of steel ~ which I do not have, to pass up a couple Pringles.

Got on the bike and thought “Phew, I think we’ll only go a couple miles today.” I was pretty stiff and a little sore. My poor muscles just aren’t used to being used lol.

After a couple miles the kinks wore out and I was feeling good. For some reason my computer was acting up and I just decided to ride slow and easy and just do whatever felt good.

I was 7 miles from home when I started to feel a little tired and decided to head back. My mp3 player pooped out on me just as I was turning around to come home, which was a real bummer. I was listening to Alanis Morissette, that I only found by digging through a huge bucket of CDs, and I was really enjoying it. So the trip home was spent listening to the music of the country ~ which has a bit slower cadence than many of Alanis’ songs, thus a bit slower trip back.

All in all I had no real trouble this ride, took the hills slow and easy and was able to do them without really losing my breath (for the most part), landed back at my car 14 miles later.

The Pringles were even better on the way home.

Cooled down a little bit and then had a bowl of cottage cheese with blueberries ~ I guess I missed the french toast with homemade syrup while I was out ~ all the better. No since wasting the whole bike ride on one breakfast.

After first 10 mile ride

I didn’t really think buying a cheap department store bike would be that big of a deal. I didn’t think it would make that much of a difference in riding.

Wow ~ was I wrong.

One of the first cool cycling FAQ sites I found the first thing he said was “you need a good bike. Not a huffy from Target, but a name brand bike”.

I pishawed that, trying to cut corners and save some money. Well it didn’t take more than a week to realize he was dead on. I started looking for a new bike and found a used Giant on Criagslist. I took it for a test drive and couldn’t believe the difference in the ride.

The day I brought it home I took it out for a quick spin ~ I was really only planning to go to the end of the road, and ended up going 5 miles.

I needed to do a couple things to the bike, including getting a taller seat post, and have the back wheel trued, so it was in the shop for a couple days. I got it back yesterday and was so excited I did.

The day was my favorite kind of days ~ 80 degrees, sunny, no humidity, slight breeze. Oh it was a perfect day for a bike ride.

I decided I was going to do my first 10 mile ride and I DID!! In fact, I ended up going 11 miles (so I could move the mile tracker on this site to 50 ~ which didn’t last very long lol)

The ride was great ~ I’m able to effectively spin in higher gears, I am going much faster on my rides, averaging around 14 to 16mph on the way out, and 11 to 12 mph on the way back. This is an amazing number considering I could barely get the other bike over 7mph!!

With the old bike I was beginning to think I would never be able to ride the 35 miles for Walnut Valley. With the new bike I know I was be able to not only do it, but do it without DYING!!

This morning I got out early and decided instead of worrying about miles I would track time. I had an hour for my ride. I gave myself 20 minutes to ride out as far as I could. (figured it might take me longer to get back than it did to get out). I turned around (without taking a break) and came on back.

My ride ended up being 432 minutes and a total of 9.1 miles. YAY. I kind of like the time thing because I will definitely be able to see improvement the farther I can go in 20 minutes ~ which I may up to 25 minutes.

I also learned the awesome benefits of MUSIC!! I usually listen to audios for work, which are very interesting, but don’t quite motivate me to padal hard and fast ~ but I have found some of my favorite songs really DO!!

All in all in the last 2 days I’ve biked 20 miles.

Thursday:

Miles: 11
Time: ?? 90 minutes?
Wind: minimal
TOD: evening 6ish

Friday:

Miles: 9.1
Time: 43 minutes
Wind: some headwind on the way back
TOD: morning ~ 7ish

We packed the bike and the trailer in and on the car and headed to Wichita. I’ve been wanting to ride the bike trails at Sedgwick County Park so that’s where we headed.

OMG Bike trails ROCK!!

I had no idea how much different the road and bike trails are! Very different. We were having tons of fun whizzing around on the smooth as ice bike trails. We hit a little over 5 miles and decided to stop for a snack and a little play time.  I pulled into the grass to sit under a tree, without realizing the park is littered with Sand burrs.

Big mistake.

When we pulled out of the grass the bike and trailer tires were full of sand burrs. We went over to the playground and Hanna played for a while. When we got ready to leave I pulled the sand burrs out of the tires and realized we had a flat on the trailer. Now I REALLY didn’t think a few little sand burrs would create a flat tire, so we headed to the car and went and filled up the tire. Yep, flat again in an instant.

This left me irritable and frustrated, as I really wanted to do 10 miles today, but we DID have big fun riding the bike trails. I’ll just remember not to ride on the grass from now on.

Today’s Route at Sedgwick County Park Bike Path

We parked next to the park office and headed west on the path right there, we went over the covered bridge which took us to the outside loop on Ridge Road. We ended up coming back across 21 first street and then across 13 street. We went back into the park at the 13 st entrance and then just took whatever trail we came upon, criss crossing across the park, then back around to the west side of the park and up to 21st St to the new playground.

It was a really nice ride, even with winds steady at around 17 and gusting into the mid 20mph range. (but I guess that’s to be expected in Kansas).

Miles: 5.1
Time: had too much fun forgot to even look.
Wind: 15-25 mph