Team Stevens: Cross Eye's First Bike Ride!

Joy here...It looks like my last bike ride may have been at the end of September, when the Trainer and I headed out into the rain.  That weekend I participated in the Run for the Cure, and so I wasn't on my bike,  and then life got very, very busy.  I ended up travelling on Oct. 4-5, Oct. 9-10, and Oct. 14-16; from Oct. 11-20, I spent each day at the local courthouse for the ongoing trial of the driver of a van who hit five cyclists back in July of 2009.  Three of these five cyclists were on the epic 100km ride that I did at the end of August, and two of them participated in the memorial ride for Danielle Naçu, a local cyclist who was struck and killed on her way to work.

So with all this travelling and court attendance, I've had to shove all my other work into my evenings and early mornings in the hopes that I can stay a mere one step ahead of the piles and piles that threaten to bury me.  And what this also means is that I've been hanging on with the barest of fingernails to my fitness.  I've still been going to my weekly spinning classes, and I've been doing my strength training, but aside from walking to and from the courthouse, I can't say that I've done any real workouts since the start of October.

That is just not acceptable.

My new cross-bike named Cross Eye.

The Man bought me a new bike for my birthday last month, a beautiful Stevens carbon-fiber cross bike, and I was not going to let it sit there and gather dust without being ridden.  So even though the temperature was 2 C when I got up on Sunday morning...I was going out there on my new bike (that I've named "Cross Eye") and wild horses couldn't keep me from it!

So at 8am on Sunday, me, The Man, Cili Padi, and Superdave all met up with our matching Stevens cross bikes (which we all bought new this summer...can you say "peer pressure"???), and headed east towards Petri Island along the paved bike path that gave way to gravel pathways with the Ottawa River to our side and the brilliant autumn colours exploding around us.

I was getting used to the fatter tires on my new bike and the smoother gearing system, while trying to figure out the different cleats that are harder to clip into and out of than my normal ones.  Or, maybe, not necessarily harder once I get some practice, but I was a bit awkward at the starts and stops as I tried desperately to clip either into or out of my pedals without falling over.  And since I routinely used to fall over on my bike rides (see here for photographic evidence of my clumsiness), it felt like it was quite a feat that I rode for just under 3 hours on Sunday WITHOUT FALLING ONCE!

Our Team Stevens bikes all lined up on the beach.

Superdave and The Man rode up ahead of us, oblivious to the whole world around them besides their bikes and their conversation about bikes.  Cili Padi and I rode behind them, keeping an average pace of around 24km/hr over the mainly flat, but gravelly terrain.

We rode approximately 28kms out to the beach at Petri Island Park, and then stopped there to snack and visit a bit, before turning around to ride the 28kms back, for a total ride of around 56kms.

So for someone who hasn't been out on a bike in around 3 weeks, that's not too shabby.

Joy and Cili Padi -- guess who is the one in pink!!!

With a sore butt and a solid ride on my new bike under my belt, I'm promising myself to be better with my fitness in the weeks to come and a better blogger while I'm at it.

Nomi's recent posts, indicating that she, too, is playing with the minimalist running shoe movement and that she's having doubts about her upcoming marathon, offer testaments to the fact that both of us, a world apart - Joy in Canada and Nomi in Malaysia - are grappling with the same feelings of being strapped for time and stretched for energy.

And if there's a silver lining in all this, in all these feelings of not quite making the cut (so to speak), it's that sometimes when you fall, you just have to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and keep on going.


Onwards!

So this was my first bike ride with Cross Eye, but I promise it won't be my last!

Over and out,
Joy