We made it - 21 miles with hills!

This will be a shorter blog since I didn't take pictures today. We started the day working on the brakes on my bike, which have gotten fairly loose. Even after getting them tuned at Corvallis Cyclery, they weren't a great deal better, so with You Tube to guide us, we got them all fixed up for the ride. We didn't mind - we're learning more about bikes, and the dogs love being outdoors with us. One of our first purchases was a bike tool kit, (an inexpensive one - Nashbar's Essential Tool Kit for $49.99) given the grad school budget.

Our next purchase for the bikes is a work stand, like the one shown below - the Park Tool PCS-9. It can be fairly difficult working on brakes and trying to spin the wheels when they are parked on the ground. Derailleur work is equally difficult with the bike flipped upside-down. Given that I once worked on bikes (many years ago) and even built a few, we are not overly daunted by doing bike work ourselves. Plus, with You Tube at our fingertips, we have lots of bike mechanics to resource online.

To get to the real purpose of today's blog, today was my first 20-plus miles in a single ride on a bike since I was about 18 years old. It felt awesome. I think Pedal Poppers and I are doing well for having only begun biking in February. I paced myself on the early hills in the ride, and my new bike saddle - the Specialized Body Geometry Ariel worked out great. So we started from home, rode up to the McDonald-Dunn forest trailhead (where we typically start our hikes up to McCulloch Peak or Dimple Hill). Then we reversed course, going south to Bald Hill's north parking lot and along the Midge Cramer multi-use path and out at the south parking lot. From there, we rode into Philomath, crossed Hwy 20 and turned east up Applegate, catching the bike route we typically take out there and back.

We stayed on this bike route into the downtown area of Corvallis before turning back west and riding up through campus and back home. Starting with the largest climb at the beginning made this possible for me, making the ride fairly easy.

If you are also just beginning to ride a bike to get in shape, you might be wondering how to keep your energy up as you progress to longer rides. There are many expensive energy bars out there. But we've found that the best calorie boost before or during a good ride is the most simple and inexpensive of treats - Nature Valley crunchy granola bars. There are plenty of different flavors (Oats 'n Dark Chocolate is one of our favs) and their ingredients are not foreign or particularly unhealthy. They do have enough calories for a quick boost. 

We commonly split one two-bar pack and fuel up with Smart Water to keep our electrolytes up. These work great. If we know we'll be doing more than usual, such as a lengthier hike or ride, we might start with a spoonful of peanut butter and a protein shake before we head out and take two packs of these granola bars for the overall trip (these are necessary when we are out for more than an hour or two). When we get back home, we commonly juice or have an early dinner.

For those who might be wondering, the weight loss is going well two and a half months into this new way of life; we are both aiming to have lost 30 pounds each by the end of March (having started back on Jan. 1st), and we're right on track for that. At halfway through the month, I have 4 pounds to go for this goal, which is reasonable at the average 2 pounds per week we've each been losing. Of course, there is a long way to go beyond this, and while pounds can quickly become the focus, in all honesty, we don't pay weight loss too much attention in the overall scheme of things. The real aim is to continue living and eating healthily, and in doing that, the pounds really come off on their own.

Hope to catch you all later.

-Sprocket