Friday came around finally. I'd almost forgotten that we'd signed up for another ride around town. This was the awesome one I'd seen a couple months before wandering around the streets. The Moonlight Mash. I'd been waiting forever for a ride like this. A ride that didn't start UNTIL it got dark outside! Perfect for the bike modifications I made early last year. I'd only wished the weather had held up as awesome as it was a few weeks back because it started getting colder, and colder.
We got out there and it was a total blast. Sure we weren't moving fast like I've now grown very accustomed to, but the fact that we were out and I had my wheel glow going made me happy as a clam. It certainly would've been nice to be warmer, I was losing power to light my wheels as the prolonged cold waged war against my battery. We had an impromptu stop under a bridge on the bike path to have an informal dance party. People were encouraged to bring beverages (beer). We didn't and boy do I wish I did. That might have helped me combat the cold some at least.
The adventuring didn't stop at that night, however. The next morning we were headed to go participate in the first ever March Against Monsanto. We're clearly not known for our activism, that much is for sure, but this one cause is definitely a cause that everyone in the planet should be on board with. I mean, it does concern each and every last one of us after all. We stood, marched, chanted, and marched some more for what seemed like forever.
I was really surprised to see just how huge of a turn out there was. Something to the tune of 1200 protesters for this event. I guess now that we've got a major protest under out belts, we've basically had the full Eugene experience.
After all that excitement, you'd think that would be enough for one weekend. Nope! Because of these events, we missed on Yoga X, Legs & Back, and Kenpo X for this week. While we decided to do a combination of X Stretch and the Moonlight Mash to make up for Yoga X, we hadn't yet done Legs & Back after doing the protest march. We also hadn't anticipated it taking 4 hours to do. We were just too pooped afterward to do any sort of P90X routine. I decided to look up the GEARs group ride schedule to see what they had going on for Sunday. As it turned out, they were planning their annual Cinnamon Roll ride. Which was split between a 32 mile ride at 10-12mph average pace and a 42 mile ride at 12-15mph pace. Somewhere along the route there was to be cinnamon rolls.
Well hell, sign me up!! I bartered with Zu and proffered that instead of doing Legs & Back Saturday, we instead did this Cinnamon Roll ride Sunday. She sounded down for that, though, a little reluctant because of the rain we were experiencing Saturday night. We barely made it. I got up at 8:30am and looked at the weather. It went from looking like 100% chance of rain to only about 10% most of the day. Good enough for me, so I rushed Zu out of bed and we scurried on down to Alton Baker park to meet up with the GEARs group.
I hadn't researched the route at all and had absolutely no idea where we were headed. We ended up heading out west toward Fern Ridge Lake. UGH.... The last time we ended up on Irving road heading out in this direction was sometime around september 2011. We'd pretty much just started getting in to biking and I was trying to up my biking distance considerably at this point. The furthest distance I'd ever manage to ride was about 28 miles during the course of a day, so with this ride back then, I was hoping to be able to brag about going over 30 miles. Then we hit Irving road... Talk about headwind from hell. It was a fairly traumatizing experience. Back then, my best speed was somewhere around 10-11mph. Going on this road, my top speed was crippled to about 5-6mph. There were multiple times we both were just stopped at the side of the road. Trying to catch our breath. Trying to muster the strength to keep going. All to go see some damn alpacas or something. 
So, here we are back in the present. We're on Irving road and the head wind is just as strong as it had been that day almost two years back. This time was a little worse because it was still rainy and we were hitting all sorts of little squalls along the way. This time though, while still tough as hell, I was blasting through on this road going 17mph. It certainly felt like a personal triumph for sure. I was the one dying the first time out on this road. Unfortunately, for Zu, she had been way too traumatized by the road the last time and I don't think she had the same feeling of conquering it quite like I had, but I'm sure she managed to handle her speed heading down this road tons better than our first outing. As if pushing through that gruelling section of windy road wasn't bad enough, we got to the only actual turn on the route and started heading up kirk road which was hilly as hell by comparison. It only had maybe 2 hills, but compared to the last 15 miles, that may as well have been Mt. Everest to Zulema.
I made it to the house without too much trouble. There were about half a dozen or so others that managed to get there before me and were already having their breakfast. I took a rest and patiently waited for Zu to make it there. At that point in time, I hadn't really given much thought to those hills I just blew through to get to the house. More and more people started showing up as time went on and finally, I overhear one of them mention that there's someone out there on the road that's probably going to need a ride back into town. The lady kinda looked at me and asked me if I was out here with my wife. She told me that Zu's blood sugar had been acting pretty erratic and she was worried if she'd be able to finish the ride. I definitely felt a bit bad because we basically just rushed out the door and only had a quick protein shake that I whipped up on the way out. I also knew that hill was gonna be a challenge for her on her bike. She basically has the same bike as me except she doesn't have the clipless pedals yet.
She made it, and this time for a while, she was the hero for the day. She impressed the living hell out of everybody out there on that ride, especially since her derailer wasn't working so she couldn't reach her 2 lowest gears which is what she needed to get up those 2 hills. So she rocked that shit on the harder gears with crazy erratic blood sugar. Most importantly, she didn't give up before reaching the house. She wanted to continue but she was really worried about her blood sugar, which was a valid concern. She'd already done all the hard work. The slower riders were headed back exactly the same way as we'd all come which meant it would've all been tail wind for her this time around anyway. She took the ride back in town, but after she got there, she was a bit disappointed in not having gone the whole 30 miles and only doing 17.4 instead, so she set out and did another half loop around the river, evening her out to about 25 miles.
The spread was incredible at this breakfast and most people just kinda gorged out a bit. So it looked as if most people just opted to go back the short route even if they started out riding the faster (longer) route. I was definitely determined to hit my 40 and I certainly needed it to burn off that breakfast. There were only a handful of us left heading that way at that point so we went ahead. More amazing views of course and unfortunately more crazy headwind at times, but it was definitely a fun ride overall.
P90X for the week was great. Zu really started stepping it up and moving on to heavier weights. I was definitely impressed because she'd already been moving up into heavier weights than I'd been doing on some of the moves at that point on my first round. To my credit, I guess I really just didn't know the weight of the dumbbells I was trying to use at the time, so to there's that. Like I thought I was using 10lb bells... turns out they were only 7lbs... Oh well...
With STP this close on the horizon, and Zu hasn't really been training on her bike at all, we both came to the conclusion that it's probably best if we shift focus from P90X and place it mostly in riding. I told her that if we can basically ride at least 25 miles every day until STP, she shouldn't really have any problems doing STP. I'm thinking on the weekends, we'll continue catching GEARs rides, or doing other bigger events like the strawberry century coming up in a couple weeks. I'm still getting my training up myself, so I'll probably only do the 72mi ride and not go for the full Century as I hear it's pretty hardcore. One thing I know, Oregon rides are friggin hardcore and the hills do not pull any punches, so I'm definitely wary when I hear about a ride being "hilly" or specifically for "advanced" riders.
I still don't wanna end up losing this upper body strength I've built with P90x, so I may still continue to do the resistance routines on my own and biking after work with Zu. She sounds like she basically has the same idea and plans on probably doing the routines before heading off to work in the morning. I'm still planning on having us complete this 2nd recovery week and then maybe do 60 day progress pics before we start exclusively shifting focus to riding. I'm really proud of zu for sticking this thing through. I'm really glad that she's starting to take the upcoming ride a little more seriously and that she's getting into doing the activity. I'm happy that she wants to actually finish the program too, so that's exciting too!
I'm nearing the end of this challenge month of eating 5 servings of fruits/veggies which I guess I don't plan on really stopping. I'm just not gonna have to be on the hook about reporting it daily which is a bit of a relief. Even so, it's been giving me some cool new recipes to tuck in my hat... Never came up with a name for this recipe. Oh well I guess.
1/2 a mango
1 lime
1 cup of strawberries (frozen)
1 tbsp of peanutbutter
Almond milk to consistency.
