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.

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

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