Tuesday, May 29, 2012

My next adventure


Hello!

So, life things have settled a bit over the last few months and I have had the opportunity to look around and ask myself- ‘what’s next?’ 

I realized that I needed a new goal.

I found it in the form of a bike ride.

 A 126 mile bike ride to be exact.  

The Harbor to the Bay ride goes from Boston to Provincetown- all the way at the tip of the cape. It is a fundraising ride for AIDS education, treatment, management and the like. 

While the ride itself is very daunting for me, so was the notion of fundraising. I need to raise at least $1000 for the ride. 

As of today, I already have half of that. To say that I am touched, humbled and grateful for the generosity people have already showed me would be an understatement. Their belief in me and my ability to do this is inspiring and motivates me to do a good job.

Which leads me to the training. The plan right now is to do the whole thing, and therefore to train for the whole shebang. Right now my goal is to complete the entire ride under 11 hours.  I have just over 3 months to train and have a schedule of training rides to follow. I’ll be sharing my training adventures on here as I am sure some of them will be hilarious. Here are some notes from this week-

Pre-training week-

Miles ridden: 2.5. Total miles to date: 2.5

Confidence level: 1.5 (Out of 0-10. 0= what the SHIT am I doing!?!? 10= Dude, I’ve got this)

Notes: This week was the ‘get to know your bike’ week. My bike, Jolly Roger the 5th, needed a check up and a few tweaks. J and I went out for two brief rides and I assessed comfort and focused on things I will need to work on. Like being comfortable with short turns. And being able to repair and change tires on the side of the road. And being on the bike for hours at a time. I already have padded shorts and look forward to putting the hours in. Feeling moderately overwhelmed at the task I’ve set up to do with this ride, but the challenge is exciting me too. Here we go.
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2 comments:

  1. AnonymousMay 29, 2012 at 4:32 PM

    Hurrah for JR-V! Dusting it off and getting it out there is a great first step. :-)

    I find the biggest thing with changing tires is being patient about it. No matter what, it involves a bit of awkwardness, and sometimes some grunting and swearing. The good news is, that's true for everyone who has to change a tire (and everyone eventually gets flats). So, good riding buddies will patiently wait while you fix your flat, and then you'll be back on your way.

    I should also note that I'm personally wary of people who try to fix things on my bike for me. I expect that J is pretty good at explaining things and not just doing everything for you, but you will be the person who knows JR-V the best. Personally, I don't mind as much if something is my fault, compared to if someone else took over and botched something on my bike.

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  2. Ariel WMay 30, 2012 at 10:43 AM

    Excellent points! Yes, the first step is actually taking the first step. I am admittedly relieved to hear that even the long time cyclists like you still cuss out tires when changing them- god, that is not fun- but I appreciate the point about having patience. And yes, I am total agreement about my bike= my repair. I am the only one working on JR-V. James is teaching me as we go but I won't let him do any of it for me. I'm actually excited to have more ownership over my bike knowledge and 'get' JR-V more:)

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