2013 Pedal for Pets

I had registered to ride this one last year since this is for the shelter where Shane & Jen volunteered at the time, but something came up late and I wasn't able to ride it.  This year, it was pretty darn cold at the start (especially considering that we reached 92°F earlier this week).  Temp at the start was 45°F and got up to 66°F by the end of the ride.  There was a light wind out of the SW.  45.0mi in 2:56:42 (15.28mph).

http://ridewithgps.com/trips/1798136

Tour de Donut 2013

Rode the Tour De Donut Ohio on Saturday. It was perfect weather and a very nice course. This is why I love these organized rides (or, in this case, race), I was able to ride with/draft off some other riders (especially nice when I hit the headwind the last 5 miles). Temp 64-84F, wind from W. 30.71mi in 1:43:38 (17.8mph), my fastest ride of the season. I was 2nd in the recumbent division in raw time (1:54:47 including donut stops, 9:50 behind the winner in the division, scroll clear to bottom of this page) which put me in the top 90 overall out of over 1000, but only ate 3 donuts (5 riders in the division ate 12 or more which knocked an hour off their times), so didn't finish in the top 3 (I was 4th, scroll down to bottom of this page) in donut-adjusted time in the division. :-(

http://ridewithgps.com/trips/1766618 

Flight Log - 2013-08-15

Got a little cross-country flying in on Thursday.  Temp 22°C, winds calm (at surface, a little bumpy at altitude), alt. 30.14, clear.  Added 2 new airports, I10 (Noble County) & 4G5 (Monroe County).  Hand flew most of the flight, the auto-pilot still seemed a little squirrelly (it couldn't hold a course at all when I last flew --in June-- with Harold).

Pedal with Pete 2013

And my second organized ride of the season was the Pedal with Pete Cerebral Palsy ride.  Despite rain for the first hour, going 0.6 miles further than last year (due to where I parked) and weighing 10 pounds more than last year, I managed to cut 3 minutes off my time.  It was a fun ride.

http://ridewithgps.com/trips/1558867

Bike MS Central OH Challenge 2013

Erin and I rode the Bike MS Central OH Challenge a couple of weeks ago. I just found the pix online today, so I'm going to put some of them up here along with a link to the ride info itself.  Erin had a mechanical problem just past 15 miles, but still managed to make it to the 2nd rest stop at 30.8 miles before calling Sherry to come get her.

http://ridewithgps.com/trips/1516040

Flight log - 2013-06-12

Finally after almost 11 months, I finally went flying again.  It was a pretty nice day, though it got rather warm toward the end.  Temp 30°C, wind calm, alt 29.92, very hazy, 1.6 on the Hobbs.  Hold at APE, followed by 3 approaches VOR-A@KVTA, GPS28@KLHQ, GPS27@KVTA, with 2 landings at KLHQ and 2 landings at KVTA. Happy to be back in the air.  Hand flew nearly all of it, the auto-pilot appears to be on the fritz.  IPC completed, so I'm legal to rent, legal to carry passengers, and legal to fly IFR.  KVTA is in the top middle with the red, yellow, and green (landings and trips around the pattern).  The hold is the purple loop at the top left.  KLHQ is at the bottom left (landing and trip around the pattern).  That little bump in the middle was when I turned on the autopilot heading back to do the GPS28@KVTA and it tried to do S-turns around the actual GPS track.  Harold is going to have the auto-pilot looked at by the maintenance people.

Yup, I'm still alive

As I commented last year, I don't tend to post here much lately, but I am still alive.  As you can see from the sidebar, I've started riding again this year (about a month earlier than last year, though I have no plans at present for a century this year), but have not flown in far too long, I hope to rectify that this week.  I still do plan to start posting more stuff here, but have had some issues with motivation that I hope to explain shortly.

The year in riding

I know I've been really bad about posting here.  There are things I've wanted to write about, but I just haven't been able  to make myself sit down and take the time to actually do it.  So, I figured I'd do a brief wrap up of my year in riding.  As you can see from the sidebar at left, I've done more riding this year than I have in a few years.  I had some motivation, Bill (my brother-in-law) started doing triathlons almost 2 years ago and we had talked about doing a half-marathon together in 2011, but due to knee problems, I was never able to really start training for that.  As a result, we revised our goal to doing a century in 2012 (my second, first since day 1 of TOSRV in 1997, his first).  We (I) decided we'd do the Hancock Horizontal Hundred since this is a very flat century that I've wanted to do for more than a decade.  I didn't really get into the training routine until late May, and then in June I started having back problems (see my upcoming Christmas letter for more explanation) and had to switch from the road bike to the recumbent.  I never really rode more than twice a week (with 1 or 2 exceptions) and I had breaks at inopportune times (like the Alaska cruise two weeks before the century), but I still managed to ride 830mi in 2012 including 5 organized rides (plus one more that I registered for, but then couldn't ride).  Below are some of the highlights & interesting numbers.

• Tour de Cause "Challenger" course - 41.69mi, 03:16:30, avg = 12.74mph, rainy and lots of hills
• Pedal with Pete - 47.61mi, 03:00:15, avg = 15.85mph
• Lancaster County Covered Bridge Metric Century - 66.46mi, 04:43:12, avg = 14.08mph, very hilly
• HHH - 100.85mi, 06:17:54, avg=16.01mph, really tough headwind section just after lunch, but fortunately found a group to ride with
• Trek Breast Cancer Ride - 42.54mi, 03:00:04, avg = 14.17mph, I had hardly ridden in a month

• Total # of rides = 28
• Total mileage = 830.02mi
• Total time = 56:03:44
• Avg. speed = 14.81mph
• Avg. length of ride =  29.64mi
• Avg. time of ride = 02:00:08

• Rides over 20mi = 20
• Rides over 30mi = 11
• Rides over 01:30:00 =  18
• Rides over 02:00:00 = 8

50@50 final update

There are a couple of other things I'd like to post on, but I'll save that for another time (mostly because I still can't bring myself to sit down and write about how fed up I am with this election season).
I accomplished my 50@50 goal when Sherry and I took our Alaskan cruise at the end of August.  It was a great trip and our first cruising experience was great as well.

Flight log 2012-07-13

Flight review complete. Temp was a very pleasant 23°F, but the wind got ugly for the final 2 landings. Winds 140@13G22. Alt. 30.19. Did the GPS28@4I3, cirle to 10, followed by 2 touch and goes, followed by VOR-A@KVTA, circle to 9, touch and go, and full stop. I used Foreflight on the iPad for the approaches, no paper plates in the cockpit.