155 Days - Saturday Bike Ride

Good day today. I was bummed I missed the 5 am run with Chad and Katie. For some reason my phone did not deliver the text until this evening. Not sure what the glitch was, but I missed out on the run and therefore have to dig up the motivation to get up tomorrow morning to run in the cold.

This afternoon Amanda and I took off on a little date. We had Anna come over to watch the kids. She is going to take care of them for most of the week over Spring Break while we head to warm weather and the beach with Amanda's family. It was nice to just eat a meal without rushing and entertaining three kids. Time was running short later tonight so tomorrow I am taking Aiden and Addy to the movies. After they headed off to bed I made my way to the basement to jump on my bike once again.

I had a 60 minute workout planned. Nothing too major, but just enough to get the legs back in shape and most importantly test out my knee. My goal was simple - keep the cadence above 90. Good thing there was a great game on to entertain me.

This was a hard ride. My butt was sore from the 30 minute ride last night and I was already fidgeting in my very uncomfortable bike seat from the start. I also started to have some knee pain about 15 minutes into the ride. I considered stopping, but just decided to keep riding. I think I am at that stage where I think about it too much. When you think about the pain too much I swear the brain creates pain that does not exist. When I got to the point of my butt hurting so bad from riding and I quit thinking about the knee it did not hurt. I felt good the last 1/3 of the ride. The knee is still far from being 100%, but it is slowly getting there.

What I am most amazed at is how quickly I lost any bike stamina and endurance the last few weeks. I feel like I am starting back at scratch and that is a terrible feeling. The good thing is that I have time. Plenty of time to get my bike training back on track. When I started out I thought the bike would be easy to incorporate. I greatly underestimated the bike.

In the end I was able to finish the 60 minute ride. It is all about building stamina and time on the bike right now and not about mileage. My mileage was low due to riding in a smaller gear. I tried to shift to the big gear and my knee starting spitting evil chants of pain. I had to really scale it back to ride.

I am happy with the workout. 19 miles with my cadence above 90. I just tell myself that a week ago I was not even thinking about the bike and now I am back to being able to sit in the saddle and ride. I have my work cut out for me, but that is what makes the journey so great.

I am off to bed and getting rested for another packed day of training and family time.