Ride Report, April 9, 2008

16.84 miles in and around the Lower Perkiomen Valley Park, the Schuylkill River Trail, the Perkiomen Trail, and the Audubon Loop.

The morning's ride got off to a bad start. My right brake began dragging, and nothing I tried - removing and resetting the wheel, adjusting the brake head, etc - seemed to solve the problems. Fortunately a former bike mechanic was riding nearby and stopped and found the problem. It seems the spring in my right brake was bent. He bent it back into shape, and I rolled further without problems.

Between the 25 minutes lost fixing the brake and the cold weather, I limited my ride to two hours. I traveled about a mile and change on the gravel and cinder Perkiomen Trail. The surface seems firm enough to ride on, and so most of my training rides for the next couple months will be on the PT.

Average rolling speed 10.90 MPH, top speed 22.50 MPH. The top speed was achieved on the 9 per cent grade on the Audubon Loop. Going downward, of course.

Ride Report, April 8, 2008

My first ride after my Manayunk Metric Saturday, and I felt like I had nothing in my legs. I squeezed out 5.24 miles in a local development before I called it quits. I still managed 11 MPH and change.

The only good thing about the ride were the new helmet and the new shoes. The helmet fits like a glo-, well, like a very good helmet should, and the shoes seemed OK. It will take a longer ride to determine how they will work out.

MS Training Blog

One innovation the MS Foundation is trying this year is the addition of blogs to individual fundraising pages. I kicked off "Neil's Training" with a capsule of my posting here about my metric century Saturday. To read this blog , go to my fundraising page at the link at the top of THIS blog.

My post from my MS blog:

First Training Ride of the Year
My first training ride for 2008 was a 100 KM trip from Audubon, PA, to Philadelphia and back, with some additional riding to reach the century mark. My average speed was a bit over 11 MPH. I was very sore afterwards, particularly my, ahem, posterior. It was a little early in the season to tackle such a long ride.

MS Fundraising Update

So far I've raised 268 dollars in direct contributions to my fundraising for the MS City to Shore, and I have a 50 dollar check to send in as well. As it stands, I'm nearly a third of the way towards my 1000 dollar goal. And still there's five months to go.

Head to Toe

New gear is always exciting for a cyclist. Yesterday I was covered head and toe by 'new' items. The helmet was sent to me by "RB1/LUVR" on Bike Forums, and the Sette Rival II shoes were part of an order from Price Point.

I should be outside shortly to try them out, so expect a report.