And a new season begins

And with an unusually mild day in February, my 2009 season begins. I made it out yesterday -- a nice little hilly sixteen mile ride during a windy 50-something degree day. It was awesome. Of course, I don't have a lot to report here - just that it feels great to be on the road again /Willy Nelson starts running through my head.

Unfortunately, I wasn't quite in as good of shape as I may have been. While I've been pretty diligent about hopping on the stationary recumbent bike this offseason, we've had some problems with it. First, a few weeks ago, we lost the ability to change the resistance -- we could say "1" or "8", but it would just give us something in the middle . . . then, a metallic clang came about last week and there was no resistance what-so-ever. That was kind-of cool -- push the pedals and watch them turn & turn & turn. However, "kind-of cool" does not make for a good workout. As such, we bought a spinning bike off of eBay . . . I set it up on Saturday, and haven't yet gotten on it (because I went actual riding on Sunday). Yay, stream-of-consciousness tangents! What I was trying to say was that I have a bit more around the middle than I should, and my average speed on the flat portions was closer to 15 miles per hour than the 20 miles per hour that I'm used to. At the end of the ride, continued into today, my hamstrings are screaming at me -- but I'll be back to normal after 2 or 3 rides like that. If I can be regularly commuting by April, I'll tackle the Waggoner's Gap / Doubling Gap ride by early May. Once I manage that, I'll be ready for anything.

My hope is to drop my two primary bikes off at the local bike shop (LBS) sometime in the next week or two, as I have a free tuneup for each of them. After that, should the weather hold, I'll be back to commuting in March - hopefully working my way up to 4 times a week by April. Then, of course, there is the Tour de Cure in late May, and SAGBRAW in early August. With all of that on top of random weekend rides and the commuting, I really think my goal of 5,000 miles in 2009 is quite attainable. Of course, check in here for updates.