Weekend Bike Rides... so sweaty

Today is Monday July 27 2026 and i rode my bicycle outdoors yesterday and the day before.

It was very sweaty.

Prior to the Saturday ride i took 4 days off.

The not so little man got back from camp on Tuesday evening (he did great on his first ever sleep away camp!) and i hit the bicycle pretty hard while he was gone and ended up with a minor cold. So after 4 days or no pedaling i headed out Saturday morning and was thrilled to find that my legs felt pretty great, so i rode about 50 miles. By the end the heat wave we're still experiencing had moved in and i was cooked.

Then Sunday morning after a good nights sleep i was up early again for what turned out to be 37 miles of pretty hard riding.

The dew points were off the scale and i was chewing salt stick tabs like there was no tomorrow. 

My cold is still lingering and maybe its stupid of me to be out pedaling and prolonging its life but i cant resist the call of the wild.

Although i'll probably resist it until this Wednesday Johnny's ride.

As the Little Sugar Mountain bike race grows closer (early October) i need to adjust my 'training'. Step one is to make the mountain bike rideable (it's got a broken spoke). Step 2 is to ride the mountain bike (although early morning single track rides in Kansas City in the Summer is my version of hell so it might be pavement rides for a while). Step 3 is to level up on my road bike rides. i need to be doing routes with less stopping.

104.81 miles in 3 days... kid-less rides 4, 5, & 6

Today is Monday July 20 2026 and i rode my bike outside this morning, and yesterday morning, and Saturday afternoon.

Every ride was very hot and very sweaty.

i'm tired.

104.81 miles in 3 days is pretty good for me. i wanted more on this final stretch before the not so little man returns from camp tomorrow but i'll take what i can get.

Saturdays ride put me in a hole because i delayed it until after the Tour de France stage finished which meant i was out around the heat of the day. By the time that ride finished i had completely come unglued. 

But... having a guilt free lazy Saturday morning filled with lots of good coffee in my cup and lots of good bike racing on the TV was pretty sweet.

Anyway...  the little man gets back tomorrow evening and i'm hoping for one final ride tomorrow morning because my current milage total for this kid-less stretch is 183.65 and i want that number to be greater than 200.

Bicycles!

Saturday...

Sunday...

Monday (today)...

Evening Ride... kid-less ride #3

Today is Friday July 17 2026 and last night i did a casual bike ride to the Plaza and back.

It was lovely.

It was also extremely muggy. The dew point was 72, that's high.

My body needed a break and the ride was supposed to be easy but i had trouble going slow. Not because it was easy to go fast, but because it was tempting to go fast.

i do believe in the training mantra "your hard days are probably not hard enough and your easy days are probably not easy enough" but i had trouble executing that. And honestly, do i really know what 'easy' should feel like and what 'hard' should feel like?

Do i even care?

i make the rules around here.

If i ride tonight i plan to keep the bike in the small chain ring because a big ride is on tap for tomorrow morning and i want to be so fresh and so clean clean.

Johnnys Ride... kid-less ride 2

Today is Thursday July 16 2026 and yesterday i did the Johnny's group ride.

i got dropped but it was still pretty great. 

I did feel very comfortable on the road bike and in the group, last week on this ride i actually led the group up the big hill, then got dropped, this week i pulled a bit prior to the big hill. So just the fact that i'm finding myself in the front and able to do a little (a very little!) work in the wind is a positive sign.

Although to be fair the group has been small for the past couple weeks so its kind of easy to find yourself in the front. But the simple truth is that when the ride gets hard i struggle. However i use to struggle before the ride got hard so i'm moving in the right direction.

Tonight i'm hoping to ride but if so it will be slow. After last nights ride i went immediately into mowing the yard and then immediately into walking the dog. So a great night for exercise and now i'm tired. 

The not so little man gets home from his camp this Tuesday so i have 5 more days to squeeze as many bicycle hours in as possible.

Evening Ride... kid less ride 1

Today is Wednesday July 15 2026 and yesterday i did a long evening ride.

The not so little man is away at a 10 night summer camp which means X and i have a lot of free time on our hands. 

It was around 7:15pm by the time i started pedaling last night but that wasn't a problem. It's summer so its warm and the sun stays up late, plus i love riding at night if its in the city where there are lots of  lights.

X and i flew the not so little man out to camp and got back on Monday, so this was my first ride since Friday morning. Although we did get in a decent but short high end workout when we had to sprint thru the Atlanta airport for maybe 3 minutes to make our connecting flight. We made, for the record i was faster than X, and we'll now be trying to avoid a layover of only 45 minutes on future plane trips. 

My legs were still soar from that sprint so i really played this ride by feel. i went fast when it felt good but slowed way down as soon as my legs spoke up. They usually spoke up when i started going up.

Anyway... it was a great ride.

Today i plan to do the evening group ride and i want to pedal for at least an hour before it starts.

Bicycles!

Trip to drop off the not so little man...

Tuesday evening ride...