Road ID

Watch this....

[Road ID News Story]

Between commuting over 100 miles a week by bike, and running close to 30 miles a week while training for my first marathon, I've no doubt dramatically increased my chances of being struck by a moving vehicle or having some sort of other injury happen to me while out on the trails and roads. So, I invested in a little piece of mind.

What I got is a bracelet called a Road ID that I now wear whenever I head out riding or running. Truthfully it's something I should've gotten a long time ago, but I kept forgetting to order. Fortunately I've escaped any incidents thus far, and haven't been in a situation where emergency medical and contact information may be needed. However, you never know what can happen out there, and at least I'm now more prepared to get the right info to any emergency medical responders if something were to happen. Hopefully my Road ID won't ever have to be used, but just in case, I now have one and would certainly recommend anyone else who runs/walks/bikes/rollerblades/somersaults/etc on the trails and roads to get one as well.

You can choose from a number of different colors, and get up to 6 engraved lines to convey the info you need someone else to know. When ordering, the website helps make recommendations about what info you should put on each line. The blurred out area has where I live, my date of birth, and then two different contacts' phone numbers. My blood type is then listed, along with the fact that I don't have any known allergies, or drug allergies. The last line is a lyric from a Coheed And Cambria song that I used to sing to myself while swimming in college to get me through the really hard workouts. The full line is "Pain is only a pulse, if you just stop feeling it", but I didn't have room for the second half of the line. When my legs are on fire from climbing a hill, or pounding the pavement and I dont have any energy left, all I have to do is look down to get that simple reminder that pain, is indeed only a pulse if you just stop feeling it, and then I press onwards.

Road ID

You're welcome friends and loves ones!

Great Weekday Ride

Leaving work early to go and ride your bike is NEVER a bad idea. Last week I had stayed late at work a couple days, so I had some extra time to play with, but was waiting for a perfect day to take advantage of that time. Well, yesterday was that day. Lower 70's with nothing but sun a clear blue sky. I took off from work just after lunch and drove to my usual start spot to get in a nice afternoon bike ride. Things got interesting though once I got to the previous 25 mile turnaround spot. I was feeling a lot better than I was at that point on my previous [and first] 50 mile ride, so I decided to go an additional 5 miles so I could get in 60 miles. But then I thought to myself "heck, why not just go all the way to 35 miles, and then turnaround and see if I can do 70 miles?" So that's what I did.

I kept on heading west for as long as the W&OD trail would allow, and take it from there. Well I found the end of the trail at about 33 miles out. DANGIT! I ended up out in Purceville when I hit the end of the trail, so I just started riding on some random roads until I hit 35 miles and then made my turnaround. It's an interesting feeling being so far out there, and knowing that the only way back is to get yourself back. Almost like going into survival mode: it's up to you now to get yourself back. But it's fun and I like to challenge myself when I can. Knowing at that time that this would be my longest ride ever, I was a bit worried curious as to how I'd hold up on the return trip. Turns out I held up okay! My legs were certainly tired and my vision was incredibly blurry [that's from all the wind into the eyes, I need to get some bigger lenses for my glasses!] but overall I was feeling pretty good. I was also encouraged by the fact that I didn't bonk out or die, and when I looked at the stats from the ride, I was pleased to see that I averaged 1mph faster than my two previous long rides, and during my longest ride ever! Guess my legs are getting stronger or something. I also worked on sitting in a more aerodynamic position to help reduce some wind drag, and concentrated on proper pedal stroke as well. Both those things seemed to make a noticeable difference.

I was pretty encouraged after completing this ride in a pretty decent time, and while doing it solo [it's a lot easier to ride in a group because you can get behind people and take turns drafting. The pack as a whole moves a lot quicker than one person can by themself.] Hopefully I can continue my training and riding at a solid pace for another 1.5 months leading up the 100 mile Tour de Cure ride. I'm now more confident than ever that the ride in June will be a great experience and my worry level has dropped significantly. Again I repeat, leaving work early to go for a bike is NEVER a bad idea! On with the ride report and pictures!

Click 'view details' to expand for full summary.

Excited to leave work early and go ride, only to get immediately stuck in traffic!

And again. I hate the never-ending construction and D.C. traffic!

That's better! There were some horses in the background of this photo but as soon as I hopped off the bike, they spooked and went running off. Oh well, their loss! [Def click to expand this shot!]

New Biking Gadget

I've mentioned in a number of posts over the past 3 months that I'm really making an effort to get my butt back into full on biking shape. Its been a number of years since I've ridden on a consistent basis, and after adding multiple bikes to my two-wheeled fleet, I am back in the saddle. 

One gadget I've had my eye on for a short while is the Garmin Edge 500 cycling computer. Now, this isn't your basic $25 computer that tell you time/speed/distance and that's it. No, this baby is for real. Similar to my Garmin watch I bought a few months back, this thing is packed to brim of features that I plan on using to the utmost of my cycling ability. Naturally it has gps navigation/tracking features, that will allow you to track your bike rides and workouts, but it will also spit out a whole slew of other data, a lot of which is still above my head, but some of the more common bits are: speed, distance, heart rate, calories, pre-planned workouts, courses, cadence, elevation, grade, power output, etc, etc.

Using the Garmin Connect website, and Garmin's desktop software, Garmin Training Center, you can dive really deep into planning your workouts and then analyzing the data afterwards. Like I said, a lot of this is still a touch over my head in terms of understanding the full capabilities and how to get the most out of all these features, but I'm learning more and more every day. After picking up the computer yesterday evening, I tinkered with it [as I naturally would with any new gadget] for about an hour before bed. One really cool feature is the computers ability to display 'courses' that you preprogram and send to the device via your computer. 

In just 65 days I'll be riding in this year's Tour de Cure for diabetes, and I'll be riding the 100 mile route. In my preparation for such a ride, I found this years actual 100 mile route listed online, which you can view for yourself here. When looking at the map that pops up, you'll see a tab called 'share' which will allow you to download various file versions of the map for sending to devices [such as, you guessed it, cycling computers.] I downloaded the .gpx file that has the entire route, and markers in it. Unfortunately, the Edge 500 doesn't recognize .gpx files [at least to my knowledge] so I did some brief research and found this nifty little site, that will convert that type of file to an array of different file types, included .crs files, which is the file type you need to import into the Garmin Training Center software, which will then allow you to send it to your device. Did you follow all of that? Good. 

At any rate, it worked flawlessly and I now have the 100 mile route for this year's Tour de Cure loaded onto the computer, which you can see in the pictures below. I won't ramble on too much longer, but needless to say, I'm very excited to finally have a true dedicated cycling computer that will undoubtedly make my riding and training more fun. If you're still curious or for some reason want to know more, I highly suggest heading over to the fitness related [and much much better] blog DC Rainmaker. That guy's blog and posts blow mine out of the water. If you have a training or fitness question, or perhaps are looking for some new fitness gadgets yourself, I guarantee you will find your answer over there. Since that's where I first read about the Edge 500, I felt it was necessary to give that blog a shout out. 

Alright, enough rambling. On with the pretty pretty pictures of my new toy. Enjoy!

Pretty tight little package for the amount of work this thing does.

Garmin makes it, in case you hadn't figured that out yet.

Self explanatory.

Got my bike's 'personal data' loaded up.

Courses loaded onto unit. [100 mile Tour de Cure]

Course map. [Notice similarity to this]

Course overview. [Preset at a 16mph pace]

Get out there and ride!