New "personal best"

Ride in to work today, time was 59 minutes flat. Nice improvement over last weeks 1 hour 7 seconds....

But, today I "cheated" and had my id ready. All my previous rides I'd had it in my bag, as it gave me an excuse to stop and get off the bike, rummage around in my bag and fish it out. Then drink some water as well. To me it felt like I was stopping from 2 up to 5 minutes there - something I didn't need to do on the way out which gave my rides home a few minutes bonus.

This morning I prepped and put my id in my pocket instead, so as I approached I was able to pull it out and was waved through almost without stopping. Assuming that was the only difference between my last ride and this morning, I saved 67 seconds by having it ready. Guess the pause just felt longer when I'd stop to rest.

I think it'll be a while before I beat 59 minutes, but it's good that I'm now under an hour. And already shaved 15 minutes off my first ride!

New personal best

 Nice! Rode to work again today (didn't yesterday) and managed to get there in one hour and seven seconds. I thought it would take me longer to get my times down.

First day's ride was 1h11m / 1h/18m, second day was 1h14m both ways. So from an average of 1h14m down to a hair over an hour, that's a big improvement! I had made it a goal to get my time down under an hour, but didn't think I'd be able to do it this soon! Pretty sure the alterations I've been making to the bike helped - still want to get the seat higher.

The ride home was a bit slower - 1h8m. But that's a Friday afternoon in the heat with the extra traffic plus some extra humidity due to the afternoon rains we'd had.

The padding, it did nah-thing!

So, I rode to work and back yesterday and again today. Covered 63km in two days - not too bad for an old codger who hasn't done a bike ride longer than a few km since I was in my 20's!

However, I made a pretty big mistake yesterday setting up the bike - I didn't test!

I put the new seat on with the taller post, added an old t-short for padding and oiled the chain and gears. The bike ran better, the increased height helped but needed to be higher. Biggest issue? The new seat is smaller, narrower and worst of all - made of a harder compound than the original! I didn't realise because I didn't test yesterday, but I realised my mistake before I even reached the end of our driveway - and it's a short driveway! The t-shirt basically did nothing for me.

Rode in to work, scrounged around afterwards for anything else I could use for padding and wrapped it on with tape. It didn't help much, but was a slight improvement for the ride home.

Interestingly, my time kind of improved. Yesterday the ride there was 1 hour 11 minutes in the morning, then 1 hour 18 minutes on the way home (hotter, more humid and more traffic to deal with). Plus there is one nice long downhill stretch on the way to work, which translates into a horrible uphill stretch on the way home - so a longer time on the return journey is expected. The interesting part is today my time was 1 hour 14 minutes there (bit longer, with the harder and more uncomfortable seat, plus the wear on the body from not recovering from the previous day's ride) but my time home was also 1 hour 14 minutes. Which means that after three previous rides I was able to shave four minutes off my return journey, even with the uncomfortable seat.

After I got home I did another swap - kept the new taller post (and increased the height again), put the original wider seat back on and added two layers of foam padding, with a layer of plastic to try and keep the sweat off and help the foam last a bit longer. This time I took it for a test ride after completing the adjustments and it feels a lot better.

Not "good", but better. Might need to look into gel padded seats or something in the future, depending on what is available in my budget range. Tomorrow morning's ride should be enlightening. Is the new padding sufficient, or is it still too hard?

Ride to work!

First time riding the bicycle to work today. Just under 32km round trip, and was quite hot in the afternoon on the ride home.

Sore. Very, very sore - especially the knees. Bike wasn't set up properly, had the seat as high as it would go but was still only half knee extensions. So it was putting a lot of stress on there, especially on the uphill stretches.

Made some modifications after I got home, including swapping the seat out for one from another bike with a longer metal support so now I can get my legs almost to fully straight when pedaling. Should help with the knees. Also added a bit of padding to the seat by way of an old t-shirt taped on. I don't think it'll be adequate, but better than the cheap plastic seat that's on there, which should help with my butt.

Going to ride to work again tomorrow. I must be  masochist...

Tomorrow is going to hurt

 Short version: car is in at the mechanic's for a while getting repaired, the few people I have that I can bum lifts off to work and back are all busy on other schedules or at other locations and I won't have a way to get to work.

Bike it is! It's actually been a while since I rode a bike at all, and many years since I've done a long ride... so it'll be interesting.

Marathons

 When I was younger, I used to think that "marathon" just mean any long race, or long thing. I had my main exposure to marathons by way of midnight movie marathons at the cinema. I have a very vague impression of marathons at school - though knowing primary schools they probably just called two laps of the oval a marathon for the athletics carnival.

A few years ago I found out that a marathon is actually a race of a specific length. Forty two point one nine five kilometers to be exact. And a few days ago I was watching some random YouTube videos and saw one of a dude that ran a marathon for his 42nd birthday.

So of course I thought - hey, I should do that! I can already run (okay, jog) 10km in about an hour, so allowing for slowing down over time I ought to be able to cover 40km or so in about six hours. An average adult can do it in five hours, four with a bit of training.

Then I remembered - I'm already over 42.

Dang.

Finally beat Cliff

 The title may be a little misleading if you're not a Pokemon Go player, but the short version is that there are the standard critters to catch, and also some enemies in the form of Team Rocket players to beat. It's set up slightly differently to how it goes down in the cartoon series, but the short version is that there are low level enemies referred to as "grunts", mid level ones referred to as leaders and big ones labled as Boss.

(There may be higher level ones, but i haven't encountered them yet).

In order to get to the Boss, one needs to first beat a few leaders - and the first few I was able to beat relatively easily. Today I was able to beat the last of them, after having battled a bunch of times and getting smushed into the ground each time.

It may only be a game, but nice to have a bit of sweet, sweet victory.