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Sunday, April 17, 2011

What to do on a Sunday?

Thanks to all the terrible rain we got on Saturday and my complete lack of motivation to go anywhere near cardio exercise equipment, I spent most of that day around my apartment thinking about how much it sucked not to be in Boston.

I was certainly not going to spend another day doing that.  Despite 10-20mph winds with gusts up to 30mph, I decided it was time for a real long bike ride.  I cleaned my bike Saturday including the chain and put fresh lubricant on it, so it was time to take it for another spin!


I created three loops of varying length that added up to 50 miles.  My plan was to drive to the Pretty Boy Reservoir area, park right in the middle of the place and do each loop in succession, stopping at my car to refuel each time.  My bike has room to carry more than the one water bottle I have right now, but I've been too cheap to go buy more holders, so this was my compromise.  I got started at about 9:50AM.  About 45 to 50 minutes later, I got through the first 12-ish mile loop.  That place is like a roller coaster with massive hills.  These hills are certainly no joke and I was already pretty tired.  I was largely shielded from the wind thanks to trees but every once in a while, I would into a bad head wind which was almost as bad as riding uphill anyway.

After some refueling, I attempted to start my second loop but got semi lost and ended up in PA (as I found out once I checked the map).  I was never truly lost, because all I had to do was double back on the road I went out on.  At that point, I was probably close to 30 miles total.  As it turns out, the cue sheet I printed out from mapmyrun.com told me to take a right when it should have said to take a left.  I tried to figure out why it said "right" but could only conclude that their software completely messed up.  Good thing I didn't pay to print it out and just used the print screen trick instead...

After getting back to my car, I refueled and made a second attempt at finding this loop.  Once again I came up empty, but only went a few miles out of my way.  I decided instead to just follow the loop backwards.  After some hellish hills and a lot more riding in the open (i.e. lots more wind, and really bad crosswind too!), I started to loop back around to my car.  I ended up taking a wrong turn when I was quite close to getting back and ended up adding some pretty serious distance.  After going a few extra miles out of the way and using my judgement on direction, I eventually made it back to my car.  Apparently, I can only pull up a map on my crappy cell phone by searching for a place of business.  I can't just enter a street corner.  Honestly, if cell phone companies are going to program their non-smart phones this way, why even bother having features like this?  I'm not going to buy a smart phone, so just leave the programming out; the half ass features are not going to convince me to buy one.  Next time I'll take a compass.  It's really unfortunate that our reliance on GPS has made it nearly impossible to buy good road maps anywhere (my preferred method of navigation).

I like using maps because every single person I have ever met who uses GPS all the time has absolutely no clue where anything is or how to go anywhere.  But I'll get off my soap box now...

Thanks to my handful of detours, I didn't need to bother with my 3rd loop and ended up with approximately 51 miles for the day, in about 4.5 to 5 hours.  Certainly less than 12mph is a bit slow but I still suck at riding up big hills, I ride a heavy hybrid, and it was windy.  I've learned that cyclists can actually blame their equipment and riding conditions much more than runners can!  I also know my way around that area pretty well now, and will make sure to do a good check on mapmyrun cue sheets since they are completely unreliable for even basic turn directions.


Now I just need to get through Monday without going crazy, then hopefully, get back to running!

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