Cadence Ride

As I alluded in an earlier post, I finally have a road bike! It's a gorgeous Trek 1.2 WSD, 2008 model. Of course, thanks to my crazy brother, I also now have clipless pedals and cycling (technically tri-specific cycling) shoes. Oh, and a cyclometer.

The cyclometer is actually really nifty. I'm learning a lot of new things about cycling - mainly, your cadence (feet rpms, basically). You can go however fast or slow you want, but you do it with gears - not by speeding up your feet. It's more efficient or ... something ...

Anyway, my brother wanted to go for a ride today so we tossed our bikes in the back of his truck and drove to the Platte River trail which, in its entirety, is about 60 miles round trip (south end of town to north end of town and back). We weren't that crazy - we just went to about downtownish (c-470 to alameda, basically) and back for a total of 24.16 miles in about 90 minutes (stops not included in time), for an average speed of about 16mph. The actual speed on my cyclometer varied as I was told that it didn't matter how fast or slow (though, the brother advised me to stay around 15mph - trail speed limit - to start) I was going, just to keep my cadence at around 80 (72-90 range).

Trip average cadence? About 78. It was at 76 when we decided to turn back around, so I did a much better job keeping my cadence even on the way back. Go me!

Now, to decide if I want to do something else today or not ...