A Two Day Recap

Today marks a week since the start of my blogging and cycling adventure! It's hard to believe how many miles I've already logged: Last Saturday was 15.4 miles, Sunday was 23.1, Monday was a decent spin workout on the indoor trainer, Tuesday was 27 miles, Wednesday was 14 miles, Thursday was 29 miles, yesterday was 32.2, and today ended at 34.25. Whoa. For other cyclists, 174.95 miles might seem like a decent number, to me though, that seems enormous. I just spoke with Becca and her mom, and my thoughts before calculating the total was that I might have hit 120. Never in the few years that I've been riding, have I clocked as many hours on the bike. I'm pretty happy with just shy of 175, but what really gets me thinking is the 53 weeks left in this year.

I want to start off by thanking a few people: Ethan Yotter and the guys at Bike Religion in Newport. Ethan gets a shout out for the ride suggestion he made for my Friday ride, which I welcome plenty of other people suggest rides for me to do. I believe Ethan called it "Tour de OC", which I immediately felt was a misnomer. Despite that fact, I couldn't believe the ride I took.  I took a very simple route, just following El Toro road into Santiago Canyon, following it to Jamboree, hopping onto Irvine Blvd before heading home. Here, a picture of Irvine Lake, hopefully shares a little bit of the view I had while on my ride.

The first 10 miles we definitely the hardest for me, not feeling too strong trying to spin up some of the leading rolling hills into the canyon.  While climbing the first major uphill, I looked at my heart rate monitor and my single thought was "these next 20 miles are going to kill me". It was the first legitimate downhill that made my mentality do a 180. I've always loved the feeling of adrenaline being pumped through my body, which probably explains the addiction to things like cycling, airsofting, and roller coasters. That first downhill really woke me up, not that I wasn't paying attention earlier in the ride, but I was suddenly more aware, focused only on the next 50 meters in front of me.

Other than a close call with a human sized pothole, the rest of the ride went smoothly, and for that I thank Ethan again. And onward to today's ride, which I would like to thank Yeshua Farfan and the rest of the crew (John, George, and Justin) at Bike Religion. Today's morning ride was a blast, not because we killed the asphalt, but because we stuck together through Newport and Laguna until Yeshua and I turned around on the outskirts of Dana Point. To be honest, heading back was fun, but tough to keep up with Yesh. After convincing Yesh to bail so he could get a few more miles in, I continued until I reached Bike Religion.

I guess I'd like to finish today's post by stating that I look forward to a leisurely spin tomorrow in the garage as a recovery and to start cranking more miles in this coming week. I know I'm limited on followers right now, but, in the event that someone reads this that is a cyclist, I'm looking for new exciting and  challenging rides, and I hope to get some more group riding together. Until next time, thanks to those of you that have read my blog for the past week.