Sunday, August 14, 2011

Improvements Physically and Spiritually

First, the physical; I have a hilly loop that is a bit difficult but I enjoy riding it. I head over to St. George and do Cheese Factory Road, the cut across Maple Manor. The hill there by itself is easy but cumulative of Cheese Factory it burns a bit. Then over to Footbridge Road to Greenfield over to Ayr, down Paris Road which is now paved nicely most the way and makes for a nice head down hammer fest. Finish up through Paris and back home on Powerline (which is also a hammer fest road.)





I rode it on July 26th by myself and then again last night, August 13th. Comparing the two last nights ride was 1.4 km/hr average speed faster over 62 kms which cut 4:48 minutes off the overall time. Now what would be impressive if I could cut another 4:48 off in three more weeks... we'll see.

Now for anyone reading to give input and for me to RANT (so you've been warned). My bike computer is a Garmin, they have a Cloud training log at Garmin Connect, Which I've used for the links on the dates because if your truly interested you can see my metrics from the ride. I use Map My Ride for most postings as it shows the route, elevation and no metrics because most the time it's about the ride not how I rode. It also lets us plot out and share courses in our riding group. Finally I've been using Training Peaks because "its free" and all the cool kids use it. My rant is why does Training Peaks take less than a minute to download my training file and Garmin took last night 5 minutes? When in Denver with a bad internet connection it would not even take it. What do any of you use, if you use at all? This would be between Garmin and TPeaks as downloading everything twice is silly. OK there that complaint is off of my chest.

Spiritual training: I have been receiving the Blog from the Desiring God website and have used that as a point of prayer and challenge in my life, it is also a fantastic resource for reading and devotional material. I have read through Matthew and now I'm in the middle of John. Matthew because, the pastor at my church has been working through the book and the life of Jesus, and John because it's the most "intuitive" of the four books and the ideas of Christ's teachings come across more than the facts; thus providing me with a contrast of Christ's life.

Then on the Team FCA Endurance "The Body" website under forms the topic of fasting has come up. I've been participating in that discussion which has lead me to get the book from John Piper A Hunger for Desiring God and I have read through that, not as quickly as I would like as the Notbook's screen is a bit small, and then at the Desktop I've got the distraction of work duties. Fasting is a way to seek God and reminder to our body and soul that our true food is spiritual as Jesus said in John 4:32 "I have a kind of food you know nothing about."

So my physical training is going well, and I'm thinking it might be a good year to go out and race cyclo-cross, and my spiritual training is going quite well to, and the fruits of that are harder to qualify. But I still visualize my "life verse" 1 Corinthians 9:24-27, as I study and as I'm riding. There has to be a greater purpose in it all, and The Eternal Prize is worth it all.

Monday, August 1, 2011

Canada's Civic Long Weekend

You have to love long weekends! This one has been fantastic, warm sunny and good for riding, with some rain at night so our plants don't die.

Three day weekend means three days of riding, right? Yep!

Saturday's ride was a good turn out at the coffee shop, with an age span from 80 to thirty-something. Which is pretty amazing. Bob was out with is new Cérvelo S3 SL, which he got from his son for his 80th, very sweet bike. Unfortunately we headed off to a bit hillier lands and he was off a bit at the beginning, then when I went to help him back up, he said go on without me, I always feel bad leaving him cause when he's good he's good.

Sunday was church and Andy was back with a good sermon, for those of you interested. We then took Céline out to Circle Square Ranch where she is working in the kitchen for the week, child labour is a good thing in my opinion! Back home the dawgs were waiting for their chance to go out for a walk/run on the trail, we often get out for an hour to an hour and half and with some heat they just are pooped. Home and a few beers (its a Canadian long weekend, and its a requirement). Then I get the brilliant idea that it's a beautiful evening and I should take out the cross bike and let it stretch its wheels on some single track. It was a loop that I learned years ago, going around behind Bell homestead's not so bad, but it's cutting through the trail system after Mohawk park that I still don't know the best way through, but I did make it through. I am not great off-road, and less great off-road with a few beers, but I took it slow and other than burs on my socks it was a great ride.

Today was back at the coffee shop with the "crew" and Bob was back with his bike, and we were off to flatter lands. We headed up a hill and into Mt. Pleasant a little quick, Bob was having a bit of trouble but there were several folks making sure he got through the hilly bit, once he was reconnected with the group and on the flat lands, he was fine. We put in some good efforts and had a good time of visiting. Then headed up to Harley, Craig and I turned up the speed a bit and no one was with us, at Harley we realized that if we headed home it was just going to be 60 km ride and we wanted further, so we turned left and headed West with plans to end up in Drumbro. In Brantford, most of the stores were open so we aimed to get water along the way. Well, out in the country a day off is a day off, we finally found a store that was open and met a nice lady sportif rider from Kitchener and she was stopping at the store too. So we had a nice visit, refueled and headed on our ride once again.

Summer Long weekends are good, summer's too short here and it's nice to be able to enjoy an extra day every now and then. Off to clean my two bikes so they'll be ready for the next ride.