Many moons ago (I am knee deep into a Ken Burns documentary about the West and feel I need to use this term more often), I went on an evening bike ride sponsored by Cherry St. Cycles, the newest bike store in Macon, Ga. It is a great bike store and their sponsored rides (Wednesday night and Sunday night) are some of the best I've ever been on. They remind me of the bike rides you use to go on when you were a kid with about 8 of your friends. The other bike store in Macon sponsors rides too, but they feel like the time you lost your swimsuit at the youth group pool party and people laughed about it in front of your face for the next 25+ years. For the Cherry St. Cycle ride, we rode 15 miles around town and it was so much fun despite the fact that we rode up Coleman Hill and my speed got so low that I considered walking, but then I figured I would be asked to just ride home. On our ride, one of the topics that came up was this new website for cycling. It was called Strava. It got a lot of praise from the guys who really cycle. They said it was a cycling website built and maintained by cyclists. I finished the ride, rode home, and checked it out. It looked pretty cool and useful, so I signed up, and then almost completely forgot about it. Fast forward 8 months (this seems to coincide with something else, but I can't think of what!) and I have dusted the old bike off and am ready to try my hand at riding and commuting again. This was spurned on by the fact that I have re-fractured the cartilage in my rib cage again by falling over our trash can one morning in December in an over-zealous attempt to beat the impeding arrival of our neighborhood trash pick-up and was told that I was to avoid running like the plague, but both those stories are for much later time or maybe never at all.
Strava was begun by a team of cyclists who couldn't train together, but wanted a way to make sure their own individual training was on par with that of the entire team. They also wanted a place where they could compare their fitness levels against anyone else that joined the site. And so...they launched strava.com. The site is very easy to use as long as you have a GPS unit of some sort (watch, computer, phone) and it is being agreeable. The site was originally only for cyclists, but now includes runners. As the sites advertises, all you really do is grab your GPS device, go for a ride or run, and upload your activity to Strava.com. And once you've done that, you can see where you ran/rode, the elevation changes, the streets, your pace, your calorie count, and then you can see what others have done over that same course or ride. They also host competitive challenges of all sorts and you can compare your activities with that of the others who are participating in the same challenge. Most of the site is free, but there are also several, more detailed features of the site that require you to become a "Premium" member in order to use. The fee is a little over $6 dollars a month. I will probably not become a "Premium" member because I don't need the additional features for my training because for my runs or rides, even calling them "training" seems a ludicrous to me and no, not the rapper. I'm not being modest, but I feel like the closest I'll get to riding competitively is when I try to beat a car to a red light or catch up to someone riding a stolen kid's bike near our house and they'll never know we were racing. However, I did race a neighbor kid of mine yesterday and blew him out of the water, but then he said that I ride really fast for an old guy. So...I'm not sure who won.
At the beginning of each year, Strava sponsors or hosts something known as the Base Mileage Blast. They have one for running and one for riding. I received an email from Strava in late December and this is what really got me thinking about riding again. The whole idea of the Mileage Blast is to jump start your running or riding year by getting the most runs/rides in as possible during the first month of the year, so that you will have a good base built on which to build the rest of your yearly running/riding regime. I have signed up and am riding. I am happy to be back on my bike, but I will say my results are a little weak. I am currently ranked 12,487 out of the 16,676 people who are participating in the challenge. I mockingly told Mel about ranking and she, the always positive and encouraging one, was so impressed that I was doing better than over 4000 people. Today, is the fourth day of the challenge and by the time I ride home from work later this afternoon, I will have a grand total of around 40 or so miles of riding done. I am going to try to ride 250 miles for January, but we will see. That may sound like a lot, but the current leader of the challenge has ridden 447 miles in only 4 rides. Yeah, that's right, 447 miles, or 111 miles in a day's ride for four straight days. That sort of makes my weak 7 mile commute to work seem a little like hiking 5 miles in N. Florida and then comparing it to a guy who thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail, but least I'm having fun, right?
All that said, riding a bike a so much fun. If you haven't done so, go dust off your bike and go for a ride. Few things make you feel eight years old again. Being on a bike makes you really feel like you can go anywhere. I have now ridden my bike to work twice and have ridden it around 6 times since the new year began and have greatly enjoyed each ride. I have even tried going "no-hands" a couple of times like I used to do when I was young. And if my mom and dad are reading this, then know that I have also found the brakes on my rig. I am looking forward to putting one of those toddler carriers on my bike and then Mel, FH, and I will be taking applications for our little bike riding gang or posse that we will be forming.
Happy reading and riding,
David
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