I love to walk! But when the real feel temperature is 92 F, and the sun is directly into your face and eyes (Yes, my eyes are located on my facial side), walking then becomes pitilessly uncomfortable. That was the case this morning.
But not being fair weather walkers and runners, we endured the heat and humidity, stopping in the gym at mile marker 2.5 for a brief resistance machine workout. The gym’s air-conditioning never felt so good.
Keeping my fingers crossed for good riding weather tomorrow. The high heat will be okay, because we generate our own wind when riding. It’s the thunder and lightning that frightens the dickens out of me.
On order are a set of Leki Nordic Walking Poles to assist me in walking. Nordic walking has become very popular in Europe.
100% animal miles, riding around the mall in contemplation of enjoying a fun coffee-shop ride with my cycling companions!
Thanks to a massive amount of dark grey clouds coming in off the Atlantic Ocean, all four of us had to skedaddle back to our homes before the deluge began. Dry as when I left my home at 7:05 this morning, I made it back home with maybe two minutes to spare.
Although this has nothing to do with cycling, I feel like I should comment on what I saw while riding around the mall’s parking lot. Trash, trash and more trash, left behind by fast food consumers that sit in the mall parking lot eating their junk food - and then tossing all leftovers and bags on the ground. I can think of countless places on this planet where I’d love to send these ignorant people. Third world countries come to mind - where squalor is the norm.
Rev 11:18 “…and shouldest destroy them which destroy the earth.”
Average heart rate on this escort ride was 72 bpm, so I’m not sure if I should classify this ride as a workout, joyride, or what. I believe the only time my heart rate went above 80 was when I spotted some loose change on the ground.
Anyway, my wife managed a 10K training run/walk while I scooted alongside her on my road bike. The bike conveniently held two water bottles in its bottle cradles. She drank only one bottle, or 24oz.
Average temperature was a warm 82F (real feel 89F), there was very little wind, and the sun was in our eyes when heading east. We began the run/ride at 6:49 a.m. Sunrise was at 7:17 a.m.
When we were on the southwest side of the mall, we noticed several young people congregating around one of the entrances. There were two police cars and one mall security in the area as well. When I asked a young man that was headed for the entrance what was happening, he told me that the new Nike Air Jordan's are going on sale. Another real head-shaker!
The entire ride/run was recorded on my video cam. But other than my wife running through a flock of Ibis’ that were searching for worms in the grassy areas along the lake, nothing extraordinary occurred. One other time, near the end of her run, I recorded her making a funny face when I swung the bike around facing her with the handlebar camera. With her permission, I’ll post the short video.
This morning’s bike ride was a nice slow ride with my weekday biking companions.
But I believe all of us are tiring of the same route day in and day out. Perhaps it’s time to change routes or alter the one we have! If it were not for vehicular traffic and ruthless scofflaws, making a change would be simple. In reality, there simply are not many places in our area to ride a bike that are safe from one or the other.
City and county parks are generally safe, but most of them are too small. Let’s face it, who wants to ride in circles for two or three hours!? A Gerbil in a cage on a Ferris wheel comes to mind.
There are very few “country roads” remaining in South Florida. Ever since the last half century’s population explosion, we have regressed into a quagmire of people, roads, cars and buildings. Buildings and asphalt roads replaced sub-tropical trees and palm-shrubs, the cars and trucks spew out pollution into the air, and the people speak multiple languages.
Picture the Tower of Babel in a jam-packed city with motorcars.
After dropping off my SUV at the auto shop, I walked from Firestone to the gym, did a resistance machine workout while in the gym, walked from the gym to home, ate a healthy breakfast, and then I walked from home back to Firestone. Our SUV now has new tires and I recorded four miles of speed walking at a moderate pace. That’s killing two birds with one stone!
Oh my goodness, I had four workouts on my Garmin 110 to upload into Garmin Connect. Three of those workouts recorded my distance and time to and from the gym while the fourth recorded my treadmill stats. Well almost! I had to adjust the distance that the little GPS recorded when I walked 2 ½ miles on the treadmill, otherwise it would have had me walking zero miles in 42 minutes.
All of them recorded my heart rate, which rarely got over 100 bpm.
My wife ran on one of the treadmills as well. When she was half way through with her 12-miler on the treadmill, I walked back home, made two strawberry smoothies, and then walked back to the fitness center.
Anyway, because of the rain, heat and humidity, we chickened out of walking and running outdoors. The gym’s air-conditioning never felt so good.
Despite everyone’s fear of rain this morning, the weather turned out to be ideal for biking, hiking or just enjoying the great outdoors. We did the former and the latter.
We did have a relatively strong wind in our faces when riding back to the barn. Agreeing not to ride each other’s rear wheels any longer for safety reasons, no one pulled and no one escaped the full force of the wind.
And speaking of the barn, we ran across the cutest pony while riding on the horse trail. The small pony was alone when we first rode beside him or her. I had my video cam on, so I’ll put together a very short video of the pony trotting to find its mommy and daddy.
