Tank 335 - 30 October 2K12 (Plus an Update on The Resolution to Ride My Bike for More Time Than I Spend Commuting To and From Work In My Car)

So yesterday I put more gas in the Mighty Corolla, from the Sheetz store near my home (not as near as the Fas Mart, but I was near that Sheetz at the time). I had driven 391.4 miles and put in 10.866 gallons, so mileage was an uninspiring 36.02 mpg.

The notable thing about this tank was that it had been 16 days since I last refueled. 16 days is the longest stretch of time between tanks since August of 2008, over four years ago. In fact, there have been three other days where I had gone longer between tanks of gas, and those were back-surgery related or Thanksgiving-holiday-related, so this is quite a compelling statistic.

Or it was probably just because I skipped three days of work, two of which were related to the office being closed due to Hurricane Sandy.

Still...

On a more serious note, I did something I'm not sure I am proud of doing last week. I had read of people doing this before and rolled my eyes at such puerile behavior and wondered why anyone would do such a thing. But clearly time has worn me down and last week I did it. After much consideration, and looking at my work calendar and seeing a half-day full of sexual harassment prevention training and nothing else urgent, I fell and did it.

I called in (well, texted a message in) sick and rode my bike instead. And then I ate lunch by myself and watched The Avengers movie at an unreasonably loud volume. It was great and now that I have experienced such a day I wonder why it took me so long to do such a thing. I was all by myself with the kids at school and my wife at her office. It was super. Three hours and 50 miles of fun bike riding and a movie. Overall a great day.

And then on Sunday, on Hurricane Sandy eve, I had another opportunity for a good ride, and I went out for almost two hours as two kids were at youth group. Thanks to those rides, neither of which was really expected a week before, and thanks to two days off of commuting due to the hurricane, I made some great advancement upon my goal of riding my bike for more time than I spend commuting to and from work in my car.

The chart above included my trip to work today, but not my trip home. However, I plan on a healthy wellness ride of about 50 minutes this afternoon, and my commute home should be less than that, so it's very likely that I'll end Octiber about 18.5 hours short of my goal.

This is good for me, because Entering October I was about 30 hours short and needed to chip away at the gap by about 10 hours a month in order to catch myself. So I got more than 11 hours closer this month as we go into the "holiday season."

So it's looking like I should be able to stick to my resolution and meet this goal. It's a lot of bike riding. I've ridden that bugger almost 4,000 miles so far this year, for almost 11 days straight.

I Donated Blood and Then Rode My Bike - Like the Opposite of Blood Doping!

So on Friday I went to the vampires at the Red Cross and donated a pint of blood. It's a good thing to do, you know, altruism and helping your fellow man and such, but "mainly I do it for the snacks."

And also I like joking about how they instruct me to double up on my drinking.

The average person has, I think, about six pints of blood pumping around in the body, so losing a pint has notable effects right after it's over. If you stand up too fast, you might "swoon" and get dizzy and light headed for longer than you'd expect. Luckily, I have donated blood a number of times (because like I said, I like getting the snacks) so I don't normally experience this any more.

So my body probably went right to work replacing the lost blood, but it must take a while, because the Red Cross will only accept my donations once every 8 weeks. So I supposed there would be some sort of effect on my bicycling the day after. And since I am keeping painstaking track of my bicycle riding this year, on account of my resolution to ride my bike for more time than I spend commuting to and from work in my car, I think I am able to say with some degree of confidence that the loss of one pint of blood had a negative effect on my bicycling ability.

I woke up Saturday morning with a plan to ride for about an hour, since the family had plans to drive to the National Park and do some hiking for the rest of the day. I ended up going on a similar route from my house to the bike path behind the dump to the neighborhood behind the church and back home, close to 17 miles.

My average speed for this trip was 16.6 miles per hour. On other rides of similar distance and routes, my average speeds were in the 17.0 and 17.2 average (about three percent slower). Not that I'm bragging, it's just that this general route isn't very hilly so it's not too rough.

Anyway, this day after donating a pint of blood, I found myself breathing extra heavy, extra early in my ride. About 1 mile and a half into the route, there's a gentle incline that's normally no trouble. But on this day, I was sucking wind and I could feel my heart beating extra hard and extra fast. As I was huffing and puffing, I was also happy to be experiencing this interesting feeling of weak feebleness. In my mind, I knew I shouldn't have been feeling so tired and worn out so early in a ride, and that this experinece was probably due to my body running on about 5/6 of the normal load of red blood cells.

So my perceived effort to maintain any speed was quite high as I continued on my ride. And 64 minutes later I got back home and went on with the day.

Too bad I didn't go on a bike ride on Friday afternoon, right after I donated that pint of blood. I wonder how I would have done. Maybe next time...

Interestingly, I also went for a long ride yesterday afternoon, which would be two days after donating the blood. I mowed the lawn (which took an hour walking behind the self-propelled mower) and then rode for about two and a quarter hours, and that ride was more than 36 miles and the average speed was 17.3. So I tentatively am concluding that losing a pint of blood has a short term negative effect on exercise ability for about a day. Although, looking back at my previous recent rides of around 36 miles, my average speeds have been 16.6,17.7, and 18.0 average speeds, and under various weather and road conditions.

And finally, on the Resolution Front, you can see from my graphic here that I am just about 23 and a half hours behind on my goal. I think I gained about two hours over the weekend, keeping pace on my plan and I hope to end the month with a deficit of around 20 hours. November and December will see fewer commuting days, so that and the anticipated more bike riding as a result ought to keep me on track to achieve my goal.

Interesting Fact: I Left for Work at the Same Time Each Day This Week

So far this week, I have gotten into my car and turned it on to get to work at 6:02 a.m. each day. And on at least two of these days, the clock in the car has turned to 6:03 a.m. before I got out of reverse to move forward on my street, which is notable because my driveway is only about 2.5 cars long.

Commute times to work so far this week: 28 minutes, 27 minutes, 28 minutes. In fact, the last eight trips to the office have been either 27 or 28 minutes. So that's consistent...

I've also made an appointment to donate blood on Friday morning just before lunch.

Tank 334 - 14 October 2K12 (Plus an Update on Keeping My 2012 New Year's resolution)

I knew I was going to fill up the gas tank this morning, and also knew I'd probably feel pinched for time this morning on my way to work, so I refueled last night on my way home from "church meeting" instead.

The mighty Corolla had gone 404.4 miles and I put in 10.803 gallons, making for mileage of 37.43 miles per gallon. I thought I would have use more gas, but the pump at the Fas Mart shut off the second time at just 10.803 gallons.

It was eleven days between tanks. Six of the last eight tanks have had at least ten days between them. There has not been another period of time with such a length of time between so many tanks. One day in 2008 there was 26 days between tanks, but I suspect that was when I had my back surgery and didn't go anywhere for a couple three weeks.

I was happily able to ride my bike for three days in a row from Friday through Sunday, for a total of about 82.5 miles in a little under 5 hours. Currently, in my quest to ride my bike for more time than I spend commuting to and from work in my car, I am about 25 and a quarter hours short. I don't recall (because I haven't kept the data, although I should) what the magic number was last week, but I think it was like 28 hours or so. So progress is being made.

25 hours to catch up and 11 weekends left in the year, so quick math seems to indicate I need to catch up a little more than two hours every week inorder to achieve this goal. Of those 11 weeks, only four of them are currently scheduled for a full five-day workweek. This bodes well for my chances and ease of which to the extent of my ease and ability to achieve my goal, just as I anticipated back when I crafted this resolution and plan last year. "Achievable but difficult," I believe I assessed last year at this time.

Over the last couple of weeks, my lovely wife had shown irritation at my continued dedication to riding my bike in order to stay on track with this plan. But after a few talks, she is resolved (get it? She's resolved because I'm working towards achieving my resolution!) and resigned herself that I am determined to not be denied success.

To that end, she suggested that I drop the kids off at yourh group yesterday afternoon, and ride my bike for that two hour window of time. That was really a sweet deal for me, because I didn't wake up early to ride before church, and my ride was longer than it would have been had I done that. So I got to "sleep in" and also "ride longer." A couple more weekends of that and it'll be a landslide victory for the bike riding.

This week I have a four-day workweek and am off Friday. My wife made lunch plans with a friend on Friday, so you know what I'll be doing...

Yes, I hope to make an appointment to donate blood. After a good bike ride, of course!

Greg LeMond did it with 37 shotgun pellets lodged near his heart.

End of line.

Four Day Weekend = Lots Of Bike Riding!

So I had four consecutive days off work in a row, back to back. And the kids were in school on Friday, and my lovely wife wanted to "gym it up," so I had a glorious window of opportunity for a long ride on Friday.

I went like 52 miles in like 3 hours and 20 minutes. It was totally fun and fantastic, and the weather cooperated and I felt totally triumphant when I was done. I saw Belvedere Plantation, the Courthouse, and lots of back roads in the area to complete my route. And I ate a large barbecue sandwich for lunch that day.

I also managed two other good rides over the weekend, too, which helped chip away at my deficit and now as of this moment I'm less than 27 hours away from meeting my goal of riding my bike for longer than I spend commuting to and from work in my car this year.

Of course, not every weekend can have a three-hour ride, so I happily share this story.

Also of course, my wife reminded me that she can spend lots of time in the gym, too, but that doesn't count. I can't see how a hot, muggy, stinky gym can be anywhere near a fun as riding a bike out in the fresh air and scenery.

The leaves are starting to turn, so I hope to bring along my camera one day snd snap a picture of a great fall tree for RANTWICK in the hopes of winning his throwdown. But as with most things, participating is enough.

Looking forward to a good week at work- 4 days, hopefully 2 days with "healthy wellness rides" to balance those days commutes, so a weekend with a couple/three hours ought to at least maintain pace with the resolution goal, and probably chip away a little more.