I went for my first ride today since the Longmont, CO Tour de Cure (which was on August 25th). I had to go because mom has been in a tizzy because I’ve got the Ft. Worth, TX Tour de Cure coming up in just 2 weeks and I hadn’t ridden. She was constantly expressing that there was no way I was going to be able to go and ride 35 miles after not having ridden for what would be 2 months. I swear, that woman has no faith in my abilities. I should mention that I’ve argued her point and she had to throw in the fact that I was in the hospital for diabetic ketoacidosis, even so, I still think she has no faith in my abilities. It’s only a 35 mile ride, it’s not like I’m riding a century, 8 weeks of not riding isn’t going to effect me too horribly.
Regardless, I went for a ride, I kindof owed it to the road bike that I bought 2 days before I went into the hospital and have neglected ever since. That poor bike. It should’ve never had to sit in the garage for the 3 weeks that it did. It’s so sad. Well actually, I’m gonna blame part of this on mom. Last weekend, it had a flat tire, and I had wanted to go riding. Instead, I had to take it to the shop. So I didn’t get to ride it last weekend. And all mom did was ride it in the little circle at the end of our cul-de-sac, but road bike tires are so dang sensitive, I have no clue what it picked up, but it picked up something and thus had a flat. But now it’s got slime tubes in it and all is good (at least I think all is good, it didn’t go flat or anything today so it must be good.)
So I went to the river trail, which is where I trained for the SoCal Tour de Cure that I participated in back in May. And I was being lazy in the first leg of the ride. I decided that since I hadn’t ridden in 6 weeks that I was going to ride like all of 10 miles, but when I got to that half way mark I just continued riding, and that happened with every half way mark all the way until I had ridden half of 27.24 miles (I could calculate it, but I’m feeling lazy). Up until that half way point I was coasting along at speeds that I had to work to get on my mountain bike, like 12 miles an hour. I was riding in a fairly ferocious headwind but when I felt like it I would petal myself up to 15-16 mph.
But then, on the way back, I had a tail wind, and that was awesome, because the trail I ride is mostly flat, and the hills that it has barely qualify as hills, I mean, you know they’re there, but they’re not that bad, and I was booking along at some points going 18-20 mph. It was really cool. I passed this one guy that had passed me and he asked how fast I was going, at that point I was going 21.9 mph and when I told him he was like, it’s not fair, you’re young. I retorted, it’s not fair that you passed me in the first place.
It was a wonderful ride though, it was so much easier than when I used to ride it on my mountain bike with the nobby tires. There’s only one complaint that I have and that’s more due to me being cocky than anything else. I’m saddle sore (and it’s most likely because I was too proud to wear the cycling shorts that have padding in them.)
My diabetes was well behaved on this ride, although I’ve decided that if I ever have to eat another Clif bar in the any kind of soon future, well, I’d rather die than eat it. I can’t stand them anymore, I had to choke down the one I had yesterday before my ride and it seriously almost made me vomit (and it did this when I was in CO too, so it’s nothing new). In fact, I didn’t even finish the bar, there was like a quarter of it left, so to compensate for me not eating like I usually do, I took a stab at lowering my basal rate on my pump. While I was riding I was running at 70% of my normal intake of insulin. It’s a good thing that I did that because I would’ve been low at my checkpoint. I was 111 (when I started the ride I was at 172) and I ate the hammer gel and went on my way and when I was done I was at 92. So I was on my way down, which I usually manage to stay about the same at my 1 hr checks. Of course that’s normally, and normally is on my mountain bike, riding at a much slower speed. So it’s a good thing I lowered my basal. I can probably afford in the future to lower it a little more. We’ll see on my future rides exactly what I work out.
Total Miles: 27.25
Ride Time: 01:57:42
Max Speed: 22.2 mph
Avg Speed: 13.8 mph
.png)
