Day 1 of Ride to Montauk training

[camwyn]

The Ride to Montauk is on 21 June 2008 this year. I'll be leaving from Babylon and doing the full hundred miles- well, okay, more like 103 or 104 miles, since the finish line is in a restaurant parking lot rather than merely HOORAY MONTAUK *fall over and die, Pheidippides style*. I'm starting working towards it now, even if probably I should've started with indoor trainer work back in January or something. Today's ride distance was about 5.5 miles according to my cycle computer. It was mostly flat and it included several stops, since I was more interested in getting stuff that I needed from stores than just riding for distance, but it's a start. There were some nasty bouts with the wind, which is why it was five miles and not eight or nine- I'd been planning on riding out to Edgewater to go to their Whole Foods until the first bout of BWA HAHAHA HAHA HA headwind caught me in the face.

Will attempt further riding tomorrow. Even if it's just a total of six miles it's still more than I did today. I hope to be up to forty miles by the end of April, since the Five Boro Tour is on 4 May and that's 39 miles of event + 3 miles of 'get to the Staten Island Ferry'.

My bike this year is heavier than last, as Poledra got stolen last year and I replaced her with a hybrid commuter model rather than another road model. Still- I did my first five boro tour on Wanda, a commuter bike of slightly heavier design and less efficient transmission. I can do it again. Hopefully I can do a hundred miles in a respectable time on this one, too. I suspect training with twelve pounds of chain on myself or the bike at all times will make it easier to ride longer distances on event day when I leave the chain at home.

Comments

[batyatoon]

I was going to ask "who was Pheidippides?", but then I realized what a dumb question that is when one has the internet at one's disposal. (Thank you, Wikipedia.)

So instead I shall ask: you named your bicycle Poledra?

[camwyn]

The one I had last year, yes. It was dark blue and different from anything I'd ever owned before. My current bike is named Chromia; it's roughly the same colour as a Transformer that bore that name, and Chromia was Ironhide's main companion on the cartoon, so.