warming up with susan

my wife and i went out for a leisurely (for me) ride this morning. we left around 6:45 and rode through town and then headed south toward tracy hill.

our average speed got up to 11.8mph headed down toward the chicaskia river. i had aired up the tires on both of our bikes, we we were rolling better than we did last week. it was great.

as we came up out of the river bottom, our average started to drop. my wife worked hard as we climbed up the first rise and kept riding well to the base of tracy hill.

on tracy hill, we were talking about the difference between her couch to 5K running workouts and riding. she mentioned that there's a real difference in effort between walking and running, but there isn't that kind of difference on the bike. i suggested she shift so the pedaling is harder.

when we got to tracy hill, we were averaging around 11.3mph and i put out a challenge: stay over 10mph all the way to the top. no problem for many of you, but my wife doesn't ride very often. she was up to the challenge. for nearly a mile, she rode steadily up the hill at just over 10mph. she petered out a quarter mile short of the turn around, but her effort was awesome.

we turned around and headed back to town. our average which had dropped to 10.2mph, came back up to 11.2mph. it stayed there for a short time and then dropped a couple of tenths. we ended at 10.9mph.

i'm hoping this is a warm up for me. i am planning to ride to wellington in a few minutes. maybe i'll be able to get the speed i've been looking for. my legs are toasty and ready to ride hard. we'll see. (8.01 miles @ 10.9mph)