I am finally back on the bike! Yesterday we took out the family bikes, which had been sequestered all alone in our storage area for months, and went for a short ride near our house. All three of us went. That little taste, less than 20 minutes of tooling around the neighborhood, put the desire to bike right back in the front of my mind. So, today, for the first time in over 4 months of daily language classes, I rode my bike to and from class. I can almost hear the scoffs from here – big deal, so you rode your bike to class! Yes, but it's over 10 miles each way, and, like all stories about going to school (although most of the ones I have hear involve walking, not riding a bike), it really is uphill both ways (partly, anyhow). We live on a bit of a hill, and where I go to school is certainly on a hill (anyone familiar with the location of the Defense Language Institute can back me up on this). In fact, according to my handy-dandy GPS that I use to track all of my outdoor aerobic athletic endeavours, part of that hill going up to the school is something like a 30% grade!!! Luckily, that part is comparatively short, only about a block long. Unfortunately, it comes at a point after about 6 blocks of steep (but not 30% grade) hill to wear the 'ol legs out, pre-exhaust, let's say. It is a challenging climb, and I feel that even though I have not recently been on the bike much (at all, really, at least not in the past ~3 months as I have been buried under the crushing load of learning Chinese as a full-time job and preparing for the now-completed 2008 Big Sur Half Marathon), I *MAY* have been able to make it up the really, really steep part, IF I did not have a 30-lb rucksack on my back full of uniforms, books, etc. I think that extra weight did me in today. I'll admit it, I had to get off the bike and walk. Yes, it was a tad bit humiliating, in that I consider myself to be in pretty decent shape, particularly in terms of aerobic capacity. But the good part was that it took place at about 0545 this morning, well before sun-up 'round these parts, and there is not much for traffic on the streets of Monterey at that time of day. But now YOU know about it. Oh, the shame, the calamity of it all!!! Not really, I'll be OK. When I go up the hill next time, I'll be (more) ready.
Biking to school worked out well today and as long as the weather cooperates (hard to say how long that will be around here; I think we are officially in the "rainy season", but it has been unseasonably warm and quite dry the past week or so) I think I will try to do it a few days a week. And take a different route up the hill next time, one with a bit more gradual of an incline, at least until I get a few hundred miles under my belt, and then maybe try it again, see what kind of progress I have made.
I figure that riding to work 2 – 3 days a week will give me something like 40 – 60 miles a week on the bike, and then if I can get a good 2 – 3 hour ride in during the weekend, I will be near or over 100 miles a week, a nice round number that I like. Couple that biking with running a couple of days a week, and I will be doing well! I hope to maintain a physical conditioning program something like this for the next couple of months, until I begin training for the Big Sur Marathon in January 2009. I will have to take a hard look at my schedule at that time to see how much time, if any, I have left after the required running workouts to continue with at least a bit of biking during my marathon preparation, not the least of which because I like biking! Also because it will help set me up for a mid-2009 Half-Ironman Triathlon (Boise, anyone?), if that is in the cards (need to fit in some swimming next year to make that happen; we'll see).
GJS
