Still going.

The 30 days of biking are over. I have only not ridden one day since I began this endeavor and that was yesterday. Today I have begun to work in some muscle building exercises.

I do not have a membership to a gym and feel that I don't really need to hemorrhage money for something that I can do in my own living room. There is a wealth of knowledge over at Menshealth. By searching around over there I have picked out a workout or two that seems as if it will fit the bill. Mostly, the plan I am going to utilize involves only dumbbells and/or body weight exercises.

This is not to say that I am not going to continue biking. Rather the biking is an integral part of an entire body fitness program. For example, this morning I rode for 20 min and 5 miles. Then, at home, I a routine involving upper and lower body exercises. All told, with the bike ride and the routine at home, it took about an hour which is perfect. My body is slightly achy since I am using muscle groups that haven't been used in I don't know how long.

Now I must rotate my chair 90 degrees to the other computer and begin the work that helps pay the bills.

Day 30

I did it, i managed to ride my bike every single day for 30 straight days. Only one day was I not able to go outside because of rain and then I put the bike on the trainer and still rode.

This also marks the 30 day goal of my wife anticloud. This morning we weighed and measured ourselves to compare with the numbers from day one.


I lost 4lbs.


Waist: 3 inches
Butt: 1.5 inches
Thigh: 2 inches
Calf: 1 inch
Chest: 1 inch
Bicep: 1 inch

My waist size and my weight I have not seen this low since the early days of high school in the early 90’s!!!
Now my wife and I will go out this evening to Carraba's for celebration dinner.

The bike numbers:

25.04 miles
1:38 hrs.

The numbers for the month are even better now:

439.88 miles
31:41 hrs

Nice.







Accomplishment…..tastes good…..mmmmmmmmmmmmmm!

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Day 29

The end is in sight!!

Only one more day until my 30 day goal is accomplished!! And then…..well there is the key. I am not sure where this will take me next. Waking up and getting moving and going out on the bike has become part of the daily routine, one of my favorite parts. Once I have accomplished this goal I believe that I will still be riding most everyday.

Now it will be time to start bringing in other part of a fitness program. I will be doing some sort of strength training 3 days par week on top of the cycling. On those days the riding will only be up to about thirty minutes or less, which is a good warm up for my body in preparation of muscle building exercises.

The numbers:

15.18 miles
1:04 hrs.

See more progress on: Ride my bike every day for 30 days

Day 28

A beautiful morning with neither rain nor many clouds. The temperature was around 80 and humidity around 70%. It definitely felt good out there with the fresh air blowing as I rode through it. Never mind the various cars and trucks and their exhaust of which they are so flatulent with. My thick northern blood has adapted fairly well to the warmer and more humid southern climate these last 10 years. Personally I would prefer a more temperate climate with neither extreme highs nor extreme lows.

I have taken to listening to my iPod during these morning rides. Before anyone says it…I know. We have all seen the idiots riding a bike blindly talking on their cell phone or listening to headphones and not paying attention to anything around them. Let my put your fears at rest, I always pay attention to other vehicles when I am riding. I do not have the volume turned up enough to keep me from hearing vehicles approaching from the rear.

I have many years of experience riding with traffic and I have done much research about riding safely and I ride accordingly. My riding experience has been on all types of surfaces andtraffic environments. I have ridden the roads up in Montana and the downtown of Boston at night. Also the roads in between and out toward the geography of nowhere of the suburbs and exurbs. Throw in for good measure every type of multi-user type of path both paved and non paved varieties. Then there was the off road back woods paths of the mountains and wooded areas of OH,Va. andWV., NC, and SC and other areas that I have lived and ridden a bike.

The one hour ride has turned out to be the magic number for podcasts that I want to listen to. The NPR program This American Life, which I used to love to listen to on the radio when I was out driving more in the past, is available as podcasts. I have also downloaded various programs like Word for Word, which is authors reading and speaking about their work. Also some poetry ones and some other miscellaneous things.

Things are continuing well on the bike ride front now that I was able to replace the faulty tube that was in the rear tire. Only two more days until i reach the magic 30 day mark!!

The numbers of the day:

15.32 miles
1:05 hrs.

See more progress on: Ride my bike every day for 30 days

Day 27

Day 27

The weather report is calling for rain as it was yesterday, and yesterday rain it did yesterday but not until later in the afternoon. Today in the morning it was calling for 30% chance of scattered thunder showers. Luckily none of that happened to be where I was riding. In my neck of the woods it was sunny and quite nice.

Today was only slightly problematic with the tire that had gone flat the other day. I believe that it might have a very slight pinch flat from not seating properly when I hastily changed the tube the other day. It managed well for most of the ride and did not go entirely flat but lost much of it’s air so that it was noticeable and affected safe handling. I was able to stop and use the mini-pump to try and top off the inflation for the last mile or two to get home which I did without mishap. At some point today I will spend time going over the bike and doing some cleaning and basic upkeep, which will include patching of the tube if I can find the hole in the tube and a patch kit in my bucket of bike stuff.

The numbers:

15.05 miles
1:05 hrs

See more progress on: Ride my bike every day for 30 days

Day 26

The ride this morning was definitely much better than the truncated one yesterday. Today I had no flat tire and rode a while longer to make up for the lack of biking yesterday.

I don’t know where exactly this turned into biking for at least 1 hour every day for 30 days. The original was just “Ride my bike everyday for 30 days”, which would still have been fine, even with the shortened ride yesterday.

Riding for at least one hour is just such a nice round-ish goal to aim for on a daily basis. Once the thirty days are up I’m not sure what is going to happen to this. The one hour “rule” will probably fall by the wayside, but I am thinking that I will still want to try some riding everyday, and even more on some days.

The next step in this process of building up the Zenkrak is looking like it will involve some weight/resistance type exercises. This is something that will be worked in on a three day per week schedule. I think that on the days with weight/muscle building training I will still ride but for a shorter time, perhaps only 30-ish minutes. Then I will be home and onto the more stationary exercise thing. It is mostly a matter of coming up with the routine that I will use. I feel that my legs are getting enough with the biking so I will concentrate on upper body and core/trunk exercises.

Well, back to the task at hand then.

The numbers:

1:24 hrs.
20.59 miles

“20”
It is a nice round number. Eighteen or fourteen is just such an awkward amount. Twenty just sits more comfortably. It gives one the sense of accomplishing much more that one actually has.

It makes me smile.

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Day 25

This morning the ride started out nicely as usual. Only 4…something miles out while blindly riding over a pile of random road debris and car droppings…thud....hissssssssssss…...hisssssssssssssssss. the dreaded blow out flat tire.

Luckily it was only a matter of yards to pull into the parking lot of the local Jehovah’s Witness place thing. Being the nearly always prepared former boy scout that I am I had a spare tube, pump, and tire levers with which to perform parking lot surgery on the machine.

It has been a while since I needed to change a flat…probably more that a year. Hey, I’ve got Continental city tires with puncture guard in the compound and I keep the tires properly inflated so as to avoid as much as possible roadside annoyances. Unfortunately one is not always lucky in flat tire roulette.

So i got the tube changed and tire inflated but had to head home by that time. I had to be back home for my weekly work conference telephone call by 9:00am. Then the day was going to lunch with my mom and great aunt who are visiting. After that we managed to have an hour rest before going out with them for a dinner cruise around Charleston harbor area which was amazingly nice.

Tomorrow i plan on riding 1.5+hrs to make up for my shortness today.

Today’s numbers:

38 min.
8.86 miles

I’ll be back in the saddle tomorrow.

See more progress on: Ride my bike every day for 30 days

Day 24

Another freakishly beautiful morning here in South Carolina. Freakish in that the sun was coming up in a blue sky with only scattered puffy clouds and no rain. There has only been one day since I have started this 30 trial in which the weather was not cooperative and I couldn’t go out for a ride. On that day I rode 30 fairly intense minutes on a stationary trainer indoors. I know what you are saying, that I should not complain, that I’m lucky,etc…I know. But this weather pendulum will swing the other direction to the other end where it is as bad as it has been nice. And when that happens…well we will just wit and see.

Well today I will spare you the random flights that my mind can wander off to in these entries and stick with …

The numbers:
15.27 miles
1:04 hrs

It is really nice to wake up and get my things together and just ride. What a way to start the day! When I get back I feel relaxed and ready for my day right off. I come in and put my bike in the spare room and then come out and get the coffee started. At that time my wife is usually getting toward the end of her morning routine. Here is her feed on 43 Things. She has been supportive of this endeavor through out.

There has been a time or two when I just didn’t want to go out. You know how it goes…I don’t have to, I can miss one day and it will be fine. All fine and dandy but then he 30 day commitment/trial will have failed and it would have to begin again at day 1. Anticloud has been very supportive. She smiles at me through sleepy eyes in the morning when i lean down to give her a “See you in an hour” kiss.

Motivation is a funny thing that way. I can get myself out to do random things like this on my own but it is easier to give up when you have no one to help encourage you and to keep you somewhat accountable. Also, it is just means so much more when you accomplish a goal and your partner is there to help you in your celebratory little victory dance. Then when you are, in turn, supportive and helpful you can see the joy in their eye as they accomplish their goal and you can join them in celebration.

Now I am ready to tackle my day and it’s activities. Today I will finish reading Stranger Than Fiction, by Chuck Palahniuk, and perhaps begin something else. Soon Into the Wild, the novel should be here, which I am looking forward to after seeing the movie. I know that I will be doing some work at some point today, more than likely it will be done in a few spurts through out the day. And then this evening I have a telephone interview to conduct for work.

Blah, blah, blah….onto the day

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Day 23

Day 23

A good morning was had on the bike. This morning things just seemed to mesh well while on the ride. It wasn’t that I was riding particularly fast or hard or that I was doing intervals with sprinting, etc. Rather things just felt good and right. This state of mind has no term in our language to convey these feelings correctly.

I was feeling part of the flow of it all perhaps…I don’t know, language has failed me. Again, the morning was beautiful, the traffic was tolerable, my bicycle was working well for once, nothing particularly out of the ordinary, yet it was. Perhaps it is my body and mind just realizing how magical (for lack of a better term) it all just is when life is just….well, just itself. That, I believe, is the issue many of us have with this life. We are always looking for the next greatest moment/thing/experience/what have you.

Greatest, biggest, shiniest, fanciest, prettiest, strongest, fastest…..what ever “-est” we happen to be chasing at that moment. We all, myself included at times, get caught up in this life by viewing it as a race. A race, though, that has no big photo finish with winners and losers no matter what anyone has told you. That is right, no matter what anyone has told you. Think about it and figure out the subtleties yourself.

Watch, and listen to yourself quietly and carefully, and see how many of the core thoughts and beliefs that you have are generally other people’s words and not something you have discovered the truth of yourself. That is not to say that all of what you hear and have been taught over your life is false, rather you need to ask “why?”. Or “How?”. Why is someone telling you something is such and such a way. How did this person come to this conclusion for themselves?

There we will end the random brain sqeezings of the after dinner mind and move on to….

The Numbers: (for biking this morning)

15.18 miles
1:01 hrs.

In seven more days, at the 30 day mark, I will go back over all of the numbers and give the totals. Also I should have some measurements since my wife got my waist, weight , leg circumference, and misc. measures at the beginning.

All those numbers should definitely play into the aforementioned predisposition of many for the “-est” and “-er” aspects of this endeavor.

See more progress on: Ride my bike every day for 30 days

Day 22

I am in the home stretch of this 30 day trial. This was something that I had no doubt of my ability to complete, rather it was something that I needed to do. Talking about consistency in thoughts and actions is one thing, but it is another to actually follow through on the words in my own life.

That is the key in this whole endeavor in my mind….follow through. Big plans and big words are fantastic, they are the meat and potatoes of our imaginations. The fertilizer of fertile fields in the mind, ripe with the possibilities of the future.

Words, in all of their permutations, have been the basis and the beginning of all human endeavors. Whether they be the words of plans on paper or whether they be the furtive hushed whispers of lovers plotting a romantic tryst, or the flights of imaginary fancy follies taken by the dreamers among us.

Words, thoughts, prayers, what have you. It is through these that we can externalize our inner world, our inner selves. It is how we can expose these thoughts to the light of day and perhaps see them in a different light at the same time. They can be exposed for their brilliance, or their banality. But if they are not brought out they are just impotent possibilities. They must be brought out on paper, on bits and bytes of a blog, or in the air as words for the ears and mind of another, for then they can begin the possible journey from dream to reality.

It is our duty to ourselves, and the ones that we love, to make our dreams a reality and thus make this life worth living and not just enduring.

Alright, here are the numbers for the day:

14.54 miles
1:03 hrs.

Eight more days. I wonder what 30 trial I might come up with next. I will continue my cycling, just perhaps not so militant about not missing a missed day here and there

See more progress on: Ride my bike every day for 30 days

Day 21

The plop, pitter, pla-dunk of the rain on the plastic skylight in the bathroom is kind of soothing. At least this morning it wasn’t raining when I went out for day 21 of riding earlier. This morning my body and mind decided it wanted to sleep in a while, at least until 10 something I think it was. I very rarely do that any longer and it did feel good and I was still able to do my bike ride.

The numbers:
13.75 miles
1:01 hrs.

Consistency is the key in all this and it is working out well. Today the body is a little tired but it is a good kind of tired. It is not one of those achy what the hel did I do to myself kind of tired spells. I am feeling relaxed and pretty at ease which is quite nice.

See more progress on: Ride my bike every day for 30 days

Day 20

I managed to get back out in the AM today which was very nice. Being that it is Saturday the traffic was slightly more peaceful than during the week. The weather was good for riding being about 80ish and bout 60% humidity, which as just about perfect on the ride with the wind cooling me nicely but still being nice and warm.
I did stop at the grocery store while out so that i could make coffee on returning home. I had the rack trunk on the bike for the cargo. It took me longer I believe to lock up the bike and get my cycle computer and rack trunk off and then putting it all back together to leave than the amount of time I believe I was actually in the store. Someday i would like to live in an area that would be conducive to being able to ride and/or walk everywhere that i need to go. That would make things so much simpler and more human paced which would be nice.
Blah blah blah…i know I’m a dreamer, but I am a practical dreamer
The Numbers for the day, I am now two thirds of the way to my goal!
14.45 miles
1:02 hrs

See more progress on: Ride my bike every day for 30 days

Day 18

Another day, unfortunately I didn’t get out of bed early enough to do my ride before my work activities began this morning. Luckily I was able to snag an hour later to do the ride. unfortunately it was during rush hour. Oh well, riding was still done and it was good.
Also it was a bit warmer than it would have been in the morning….about 90-ish and fairly humid (70%+) I believe. It didn’t bother me, which I think is odd considering my thick Northern Blood. When your moving on the bike though, the temperature doesn’t bother you as much since you have the wind cooling you off. It does tend to hit you in sheets of sweat at stoplights and when you get home.
Tomorrow is another early work day and then afternoon work as well so I might not get out until early evening which should have about the same temperature as the earlier morning ride I am used to. Except by that point the concrete of the street has spent all day absorbing the heat of the sun and keeps it warmer than it would be if I were on a gravel path or other natural turf.

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Day 17

Yup yup yup. Another day another ride and I am doing good. My legs are starting to get some muscle growth and definition….according to my wife at least. I am beginning to see it as well though.
A short entry today.

The numbers:
15.6 miles
1:06 hrs.

See more progress on: Ride my bike every day for 30 days

Day 16

Another day another hour+ on the bike. That was a good start, then at home I settled down with fresh coffee and my egg/bagel concoction with a book under the new umbrella and chair on the porch in the not yet blistering heat of the morning. After a bit my little anticloud made cute morning noises and emerged. I gave her some coffee and munchie then it was off to the yard.
Once in the yard there was cutting of the grass with out manual rotary mower, and wacking of the weeds as well as spraying them with poison. Also i managed to pack the car with bottles to be recycled and stuff to take to the dump. Once that was done the morning was over and now here we are showered and relaxed and preparing to go to the store for the food.
This was a nice entry full of all kinds of quite goodness that is my life before noon on a Tuesday in June.
The numbers:
15.36 miles
1:08 hrs.

Also yesterday my bike was diagnosed with an aged and malfunctioning grip shifter. I was sold a new shifter and given the basic instructions on installation of said shifter in order to save money on shop mechanic charges. So I managed to remove the old one and install the new one.
I have gears!! It is nice to be able to run the range of gears again for riding in the morning.

OK…..grocery store…lunch….it is good.

See more progress on: Ride my bike every day for 30 days

Day 15

Ah yes, the half way point. The morning weather continues to be beautiful before the evil sauna that is the South in Summer barges in by lunch.
I was wondering why every once in a while some driver and/or passenger, in this case young construction types in a company pick-up, feel the need to tell me to “get up on the side walk”. This is even just before the “share the road” sign about 20 yard ahead. I think that the general populace is just undereducated about rules/laws of the road. I am in the street because:a) it is safer, b)It is the law. By riding on the side walk the person on the bicycle is automatically at fault in any car/bike collision. Of course here in SC the laws says that bicycles have the same rights and responsibilities as motor vehicles…except..that they “ride as near to the right side of the roadway as practicable”. Now there is no legal definition of the word “practicable”. For me in my head I read it as “safe” which often means a good way into the lane so as to prevent other vehicle operators from endangering me as the driver of a bicycle. True bicycle are much slower than cars and many people are too important to be made late by that damn bicycle guy in the right lane of a four lane road even though they could have left earlier and given themselves leeway for unforeseeable events.

Alright I’ll get of of my high bike and stop ranting now. I generally have only good interactions with motorists on my rides. it is just those comments from the few and far between yahoos that get stuck in my craw.
The numbers:
15.29 miles
1:05 hrs.

Another day beginning bicycle bliss followed by yummy everything bagel with an egg (which also has some jalepeno and mushroom in it) and yummy coffee…and now the day has begun.

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Day 14

Another day another bike ride. Good times…good times. The weather in the morning continues to be beautiful which is perfect for getting out on the bike since it is only in the low 80’s and not too humid. This is only temporary of course since it still is just the beginning of summer. As the season progresses the South will progress more toward the central furnace of Hell and then back away to the mild temperate wonderfullness of Fall.

Ah well then the numbers:
15.15 miles
1:04 hrs

For the week:
88.6 miles
6:58 hrs
This is of course with one day that was 30 min. intense stationary trainer workout with no measurable distance.

Totals for 14 days:
191.56 miles
14:31 hrs

About halfway to the 30 day mark on this and it is already becoming a habit to just get up in the morning and go for a ride.

See more progress on: Ride my bike every day for 30 days

Day 12

Made it up and out again this morning. The habit is becoming ingrained…wake…go to the bathroom….put on bike shorts….get the bike…let out dog…..go for ride, etc.
Today’s numbers:

14.87 miles
1:02 hrs.

I like it that when I get back from the bike ride I am in a fantastic mood and ready to start the day. Of course at that point it is only starting like I normally would have if i hadn’t already been up and on the bike for an hour. At the beginning of this month endeavor when i got home I was feeling the edge of the morning grogginess still there from lack of caffeine in my system. Now when I get home the bike ride has energized my system as a cup of coffee previously had. That is not to say that I have given up on coffee, for that would be a sin against the Zenkrak! This just means that I believe that my body has lessened its need of coffee in the morning to attain person status at the beginning of the day.

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Day 10

Day 10…Double digits!!!

This has been day 10 of my biking 30 days in a row. Today was a a pretty good day, this was the first time that I went out with the iPod and listened to music while riding.
Luckily I had a playlist just over one hour of high tempo music that kept me going well. Mostly it was System of a Down with a little Soulfly and Rise Against. With the music I noticed that my average pace picked up a bit and I rode a little harder.
Numbers for the day:
15.19 miles
1:03 hrs.
And at the end I was in a great mood and upbeat…similar to myself after my first cup of coffee; of which I had not had any at that point.

See more progress on: Ride my bike every day for 30 days