Category: Daily Ride

There are a few items I should take on every bike ride. There is the helmet, gloves, and lights. The helmet is for physical and mental protection. There is a chance that my helmet could save my live or prevent serious injury. There is also the added comfort in wearing said helmet when a car zips past 12 inches away. The gloves are for comfort and nailing the 90’s look. The lights are to help drivers see us, and if we happen to ride at night they help us see the road.

As I have been building out the inside of my shed I wanted to have a bike station. This is where both of our helmets, gloves, and lights would be. Once I got the electrical wired I saw the potential for a powered bike station where the lights are being charged via USB. I had a light switch just inside the door already and the space was holding my gardening tools. There was a nice spot to add a piece of plywood and be able to add some hangers and clips. I grabbed a scrap peice of wood and made a shelf for the lights to sit on and charge.

Someday I will insulate the wall and then make the whole thing plywood but for now this works well.

Workout detail

Kate and I rode to town for lunch but the cafe closed at noon. The coffee shop is closed on Sunday’s and we ended up going to the health food store for some snacks. We both wished we had just gone to the gas station and gotten proper snacks. The ride was very nice with no rain or wind. We got home and I started weeding some more. We got a good amount of rain recently and the ground was nice and soft for pulling weeds. I really dislike pulling weeds. I need to get better at doing it when they are really small and easy to pull.

The main thing I have learned about myself over the years is that I need to exercise regularly. If I don’t my body starts to ache and then I get fussy like a child. Its really embarrassing to be honest.

It starts in the middle of my back between the shoulder blades. That leads to my neck and shoulders. Then my lower back, hamstrings, and calves. It takes a week or two of not having regular exercise and this begins to set in. The reasons for my exercise routine breaking down are plentiful:

• Injury
• Broken equipment
• Weather
• Boredom

It is pretty ionic that a bike blog talks about being bored with biking, but it happens. I am still riding my bike but not regularly enough lately. The main reason for this is that I fell off of my training plan a couple of months ago. Between working on the trails and the cabin, my free time to ride 6 to 10 hours a week had disappeared. I was also pretty sore from the manual labor. Apparently my day job is not nearly as physical as construction work.

Then my bike frame cracked and I had to get it repaired. This process took some time and while the bike was un-ridable I moved further away from my training. I stopped doing my bodyweight exercises during this time. Once I had the bike back I was more interested in blazing a few fast laps around the land than going for a multi hour training ride.

Then there was the weather. Southwest Colorado is a high desert climate. While it isn’t 100+ degrees it does hit the upper 90’s, and we are closer to the sun. When you add it up it becomes a very solid excuse for not riding your bike.

Finally I was getting a little bored with the routine. Intervals are fun when you first start doing them. As the weeks move on they become tedious and repetitive. I was also riding by myself most of the time.

One of the most enjoyable things about riding a bike is sharing the experience with someone else. Unlike running, you can rest and still keep riding the bike. When it is flat or downhill you can coast and maintain a conversation very easily. You can ride for a while and stop at a coffee shop and have a cherry tart. Then ride home. Its really great for distracting yourself from the exercise that is happening.

To that end I have taken actions to rectify this situation:

• Started doing yoga, again
• Restarting my training program on Monday
• Doing more rides with Kate
• Setting the Apple Watch to only display the time while exercising

Yoga is something I have done off and on for over 17 years. I knew I needed to exercise more but I have never been a gym person. There was a Yoga studio near my work and I stated going. I quickly found that I enjoyed it a lot and was also pretty good at it.

Yoga’s combination of balance, strength, and breath work creates an endless potential for progression. I have never been very limber but over the years I have progressed a lot. Unfortunately when I don’t practice regularly the progress regresses quickly. I have incorporated various yoga moves into my bodyweight warmup, but it’s still not the same as following a set of movements.

Over the years I have practiced yoga with a lot of teachers in a variety of styles. In 2009 I did a month long 200 hour teacher training course and learned that the Ashtanga Yoga practice is my favorite.

In Ashtanga Yoga the movements all have modifications. If you have trouble touching your toes with straight legs; you can bend them. This helps someone, with knee issues and tight hamstrings, avoid trying positions that could cause an injury.

The combination of the movements into the various series is challenging ,and by then end of it your body is wiped out. There are a lot of pushups. If you are interested in learning I recommend finding a yoga studio that practices Ashtanga/Mysore Yoga and/or get David Swenson’s book.

Yoga helps me change things up with the bodyweight routine. If I don’t feel like doing pull ups I will do yoga and vice versa. This will help me keep on track with the off bike exercising.

I am starting the cycling training program I did this spring again. This will provide a structure to plan my day around. If I write something down I am much more likely to do it. With the training program I am able to simply add it to the calendar in Training Peaks starting on Monday, and it fills in every workout by day for the next 13 weeks.

The goal this time with the training plan is less about performance, and more about having a routine that gets me exercising regularly. The goal to race in anything is on hold till the Pandemic is done. Not only are no races being held I really don’t need to get injured and go to the hospital right now. Also I am going to start riding with Kate more.

Whenever I ride my bike with Kate I have a great time. We spend time together and talk about our day. The only reason I wasn’t riding with her was because I was following the training program, which specifies the intensity of the ride. Based on the training program I needed to ride faster than Kate. This was dumb.

The reality is that I am 43 years old and so far out of being a competitive rider that serious training makes very little sense. Except of course to feed my ego. Silly boy. Going on a ride with Kate is still plenty of exercise and I am spending more time with the person I love the most in the world. Win👏to👏the👏Win.

The technique to “riding with your wife successfully” I learned from Kate’s dad, Bill. He and his wife, Karen, were avid cyclists. He told me that once he learned to ride behind Karen then they would ride together the whole day.

It is an obvious thing to see, once you see it. The problem that I and many others have is that once on a bike we become competitive. It starts off subtly but ends in a full sprint to the next mail box. That is the ego literally driving your bike. Turning that off and riding second on purpose is antithetical to how I learned to ride a bike. I consciously wait for Kate to start and then fall in behind her. Turns out I am winning all the time now.

Finally I removed all the data from the Apple Watch Workout face except for the time. This will prevent me from focusing on anything other than the time I am on the bike, which is all I need to focus on. This will help me ride at Kate’s pace and also just let me ride my bike and enjoy the scenery. The physical benefits will come from that just fine.

The cool part is that all of the metrics are still being recorded and I will be able to geek out on them in Training Peaks. It is interesting to see how you are progressing even when just doing leisurely rides. There is also a potential for over training since I won’t be watching my heart rate on rides. The possibility is minimal but still something to be aware of.

Workout Detail

Kate and I rode into town. Had a coffee and blueberry-peach tart at the local coffee roaster. Then we rode home before the afternoon rain storm hit. It was overcast and the lighting was a little funky. So we rode with our headlights and taillights to help drivers see us. We should really ride with them all of the time. As a driver I know it helps me see and pay attention to cyclists.

My colleague posted about his work history today and how it lead to where he is now. Its a great post about finding what you want to do with your life and then doing it. Some people are lucky and find their career path straight outta high school or college. Jon and I did not have that path.

Jon and I both found our footing in sales. For him it was selling pumps and for me it was office supplies. If there is one job I recommend that everyone give a try it is sales. You don’t even have to be good at sales to gain a plethora of knowledge about business. I haven’t been in a sales position for over 2 years but I use sales techniques all day long.

Sales teaches you to be bold, persistent, and confident of your position and product. Sales teaches you humility and never counting a sale till the money is in your hand. Sales teaches you the power of percentages and how just a little more effort can generate a massive increase in profit. Sales teaches you when to shut your mouth and let things happen. Sales teaches you to listen and reply with useful information. Sales teaches you to hustle and never take a moment for granted.

All of my school life I was terrified of sales. I got pulled into an MLM my senior year of college and that soured me on sales for a while. I was so terrified of talking with customers to the point that I worked as a cook instead of waiting tables. I got into websites and the Internet cause it didn’t involve the awkwardness of face to face communication.

I was adrift after graduating University and bounced around a number of jobs. I worked at the newspaper handling production. I ran a local pizza delivery store making pizzas and yelling at drivers. Then I was the webmaster for a small recruiter doing well until the dot com bust happened. Then I thought I would be a chef and worked a few cook jobs. Even spent 5 months as a sushi chef. Learned a lot about knife skills on that one. My last retail gig was as a front desk agent at a high end hotel. After a few months of that I realized I needed to go into sales and start making some money.

My first sales job was selling office supplies as an independent salesperson for Quill.com. They gave me a bag with catalogs and an area of Phoenix and set me on my way. I spent about 8 months learning to just walk into a business and start talking about office supplies. I could look at a laser printer and tell you how much you were paying for toner and what I could save you.

I started in Spring and worked through the summer in Phoenix, AZ. I got yelled at, chased by dogs, and kept doing it day in and day out. It took me a while to realize how bad the job actually was but I made friends and learned how to sell, a little. The one thing I did get out of that job was the confidence to sell anything to anyone at anytime. I wasn’t a sales machine but I could get into doors that required a buzzer from the inside. I learned to listen and never assume the sale. I learned to take 50 no’s in a row and then do it again. Cause when you get that 1 yes it makes the no’s disappear like the wind.

Not everyone is in Sales but we are all in sales. At the end of the day we only have jobs because someone is buying the companies product. Find a way to add to the bottom line and you should have a job forever. Thinking like a salesperson means you are thinking about how to make the company money. It can come in the form of closing a sale or saving a sale. It can come from a fast reply or a new feature added to the product. It can come from convincing the product team to change directions and take a risk on something new.

When I was selling office supplies I ended up in an older businessman’s office one day. We talked about office supplies and business and sales. He told me something I have never forgotten: “Learn how to sell and you’ll never go hungry.” I don’t think we have to all be used car salespeople and try to take advantage of each other. I think that learning how to sell helps all of us work better together. Once you have a sales job and understand how easy it is to be a total jerk as a customer you learn to be nicer.

Workout detail

The temperatures have cooled but I am still in a walking mood. Kate and I walked the fenceline trail and talked about the house design. Things are coming together well. We are agreeing a lot which is nice.