I’m riding again, sort of…

For the 1 person out there that reads this, you may have noticed that my Cycling Log has some new entries in there in the last couple of months.  I have been doing some riding (and some, little, running) lately.  In May, my brother-in-law and I were talking about running in the Columbus (Half-)Marathon in Oct.  Unfortunately, shortly after we decided to do that, I tweaked my knee in one of my very early runs and was basically unable to do any training for nearly 2 weeks.  As a result, we’ve scrapped the half-marathon idea, but we do plan to ride a century in 2012 (not sure which one yet, part of me wants to do the first day of TOSRV, but part of my wants to do the Hancock Horizontal Hundred, we’ll discuss it when I visit my sister in Oct).  So, since the knee stopped hurting I’ve run a few times (including a couple of 5Ks, the first with Erin, Shane, and Jen, and Sherry and Maggie walking about 2 mi; the second I thought was going to be with Jen, but she and Sherry ended up walking with the dogs and I ended up running it alone).  Given that I hadn’t done a competitive run in well over 25 years (and I was at least 40-50 lbs lighter then), I guess I can’t complain too much about the results.  In the meantime, the legs are feeling a little better the last couple of rides, and the avg. speed is picking up, though not yet back over 15 for a full ride yet.  No, I won’t ride through the winter (at least not outdoors), but it has been kind of nice riding again.  I’ve ridden the Trek three times and the Stealth twice.  I need to get a new saddlebag for the Trek, I’m not sure what ever happened to the one I used to have, but I can’t find it now.  I also need to fix the fairing on the Stealth, I lost a nut during the last Stealth ride.  I’m also seriously considering getting a RoadID, that would be an improvement over the 15-year-old business card I carry with me now.  The new HRM is a Garmin with GPS, so I’m getting accurate maps/distances (including elevation changes that I never had before).  Maybe sometime I’ll post a route map like my flight tracks.  I’ll have to think about that some.  I probably won’t do that for any rides/runs that start from home, but if I do anymore competitive/organized runs/rides, I might do it then.  Here’s a picture (coming in to the finish line) from the Dash for Donations 5K in July.  I look better than I felt 🙂

Update: I’m including links to both of those 5Ks (neither of which were actually 5K).
Dash for Donations
Dog Jog

I’m alive again, and the blizzard (not) of ’08

Well, at 23:00 last night the temperature was 54°F, at midnight it was 44°F, and at 07:00 this morning, it was 14°F. That drop reminds me so much of the blizzard of ’78 (wow, was that really 30 years ago last week?). Alas, this time, we got the rain to start, but didn’t get the snow. We did have wind gusts of about 60 mph this morning. Meanwhile, it could be worse, Matt is dealing with -26°F and a broken windshield this morning, Shane is still in Iraq, and, at least, I’m on solid food again (you don’t really want to know what I’ve been through since Sunday morning, trust me on this one). On the other hand, if you’re looking for a way to lose 8 pounds in 2 days, this one works, but I’d just as soon pass.