Making Progress

I want to sincerely thank everyone who has donated to my ride! I am only $45 away from my goal with more than two months to go! So, thank you.

For the last few months I've been training hard. My ideal regimen is to do my 30-mile loop every other weekday, on days in-between do a 12 mile recovery ride, and do a longer ride on the weekends. I have not kept that schedule at all; the main reason is weather. It has been HOT the last few weeks. As such, EARLY morning is the ONLY time to ride and while I often do get up at 5AM I have a difficult time doing that every day. Starting a bike ride at 7 is way too late as it heats up quickly. Nonetheless, progress is being made.

I have a bike computer, basically a very souped up speedometer. This computer keeps track of a ton of data; speed, distance, cadence, heart rate, etc. Additionally, since the computer is made by Garmin it records my GPS coordinates. When I ride I always record all this information and then download the information to my computer. This allows me to track my progress. As an example let's look at the ride I did this morning:



As you can see, I did ~50 miles in 2 hours and 55 minutes with an average speed of 17.2 mph. This is the third time that I have done this course this season. I'll let the numbers do the talking.

Bradley's Papa Bear 2 course 2012
Date	Time	Average Speed
June 10	3:09:07	16.3
June 24	3:03:53	16.4
July 8	2:55:07	17.2

Believe me when I say that a jump of 0.8 in average mph is huge!

You might recognize the guy in this article :). Click here.

There is still plenty of time to support my ride, so tell everyone you know to come to my blog and click: