BICYCLING TODAY

Today I met with a girl down in Folsom to ride one of Folsom's many beautiful bicycle trails.  It was a beginner's ride and I did 10.123 miles in 1 1/4 hours.  I lost 23.8 fat calories, average speed was 9.8 mph and had a maximum speed of 18.1 mph.

It was a great ride with a few hills and to get me really aware of my surroundings were a good number of people and other bicyclers.  I had to get used to the fast riders coming towards me on a curve, but the most I learned is how to use my few speeds (mostly the granny ones) with my shifting, which I learned with the help of my friend. 

She also had a Specialized Dolce bike in white.  She just bought hers last week and today something in her shifter broke.  Luckily, her bike is still under warranty and she had to get a loaner bike right after our ride.

So now I just have to get my endurance factor up.  After the ride, I was huffing and puffing for about an hour.  My friend didn't want to stop that much because she had clip ons and it was a hassle getting out of them because they were set a bit too tight.  In fact, our first stop she fell.  These clip ons were also new, so she has to get used to them and set them correctly.

I learned a lot.  The big lever right hand made peddling easy.  The small lever, right hand made peddling  harder.  My left lever shall not be touched because that is the one that makes rotating my legs harder.  Braking is done by pressing the third lever.  This may be simple to most folks, but going from a ten speed Raleigh Competition bike with only two shifter levers in between the legs and only having to deal with one of them and then going into a 27 speed bike with three levers in a different position on the drop down handlebars takes a little bit of getting used to.  I did have one small mishap while learning to shift was when my chain came off.  I hollered to my friend who was too far up ahead, so I just waved down a young man bicycler who just popped the chain right back on again.  My friend was out of sight, but then came back.

Up here in the foothills made it hard for me to change gears because mostly all the bike paths are on hills, so trying to get speed and practice shifting was really hard to do unless I went to an empty parking lot and that wasn't very much fun.

I did not fall or really have any fear of falling today.  I was pretty confident in my riding, but it was quite challenging to keep up with someone who didn't want to stop but once for water in one hour.  Next time, I'll be up front and my friend will follow so I could stop when I want.

It was also going to be very hot, which added to the challenge, even though we started out early.  When I got home from the ride I took a nap.