Record your rides

I've been using Mapmytracks.com to record my cycling to and from work for the past year now. And if I were to offer any advice to aspiring cyclists who wish they could ride more, it would be to get a gps and record all of you rides. I found gps to be the best motivational tool available. Mapmytracks.com has multiple ways of analyzing your ride and comparing it to other similar rides in the past. You can figure out where you have gained speed and where you need to work on your riding.

The program can be combined with more serious training tools, which I do not use. However, it is possible to measure cadence and heart rate, and sync this data to your gps data to get a complete picture of your ride and the amount of exertion you are putting into your workout.

At any rate, today is the end of my first year recording my rides. My total mileage on my bike came out to 5059 miles. Not bad for a year of commuting to work on my bicycle. Assuming I drove those miles in our Prius, which gets 45mpg, and $3.50/gallon of gas that's 112 gallons of gas saved, and $433. Nice.

My New Obsession, realized.

I got one

Back in October I wrote an entry about my new obsession with a bike I thought was to expensive for me to buy. Well, no longer, I'm now the proud owner of a Surly Long Haul Trucker. I've had the bike for about three weeks now, and I've put over 200 miles on it since I brought it home three Fridays ago. I've been commuting on it since I got it, but have yet to take it out for a nice long weekend ride.

The beauty of North Carolina is that spring is here! We are already having sporadic 60-70° weather, so before long one of those warm days will coincide with a Saturday, and I'll be gone right after breakfast, Long Haul Trucker beneath me, no tights, no jacket, no wool socks.

I am really enjoying this bike. It's slower than my old bike, but it is much more comfortable than the old bike.