Bike Fail (or more correctly Fitness Fail) - RonO's Ramblings

Today, Tara and The Kid ran down to Target to get him some more clothes.  While they were gone, I decided it would be a good time to take a bit of a bike ride.  Unfortunately, I didn’t take my current condition into account.

Due to weather, businesses at work, and other factors I’ve been missing a lot of my lunch-time walks the last month or two.  Since these walks have been my main fitness activity of late, my conditioning has dropped from pretty good when I was doing karate regularly in Bartlett.  But, it has dropped much further than I’d realized.

I left the house, and took a couple of turns to what I thought was a fairly level road – at least until I realized I was having to pulse my breaks to keep me at a speed I was comfortable with (I might have even speeding, or close to it).  But then the road started up hill, and I started feeling it.

I found my way out to a main street and decided I was tired enough already (about 10 minutes of riding, only about 5 climbing a moderate hill) that I needed to turn back.  Two blocks before reaching our road, I turned onto a different road hoping for a less steep climb.  I think it was, but it was longer (obviously since I needed to cover the same total elevation change) and about half way from the intersection to home, I gave up and walked the rest of the way home.

This is frustrating when I think about how the last couple of summers in Bartlett I would often go out and ride for an hour or more.  Of course, Bartlett is much flatter than RB, and I was, as I mentioned above, in better shape.

I’m still planning on either walking or biking to the bus station once The Kid is off school.  But I may have to go to the walking plan since the trip home would require a significant hill climb – and the trip to the stop might or might not take a hill climb depending on which route I chose.