Made the Jamaica ride today. The trail surface was nice and dry for the most part, firm without much washout, save for a couple of small and easily-avoidable muddy areas. A few years ago parts of the trail were utterly destroyed due to harsh rains and flooding but the repairs have been holding up very well, particularly in light of the harsh rains and flooding we’ve had here in the past couple of weeks.

Did a there-and-back-again from home, to the Saltillo trailhead and back home. Round trip of 16.28 miles for a weekly total of 50.83. Still not great for this time of year but not bad for only the second week of bicycling for the year. According to Fitbit this ride burned 1005 calories. Seems a bit high to me. And by “a bit” I mean like 300 bits.

One of the things I like best about this trail is that it has these woodsy sections:

Even though there is a train track about 40 yards to the right and a neighborhood about another 120 yards beyond that there is a feeling of isolation in this part of the trail. The trees and thick ground foliage (nettles in particular) really dampen the sound of city-life and civilization in general so it’s easy to forget about those things and just enjoy the scenery.

Didn’t see any turkeys or deer this trip. Or any of those groundhog things. Maybe next time.

Later did some laundry and the drawstring was pulled out of my Nashbar bike shorts. Real pain to get it back in. Used a bike-wheel spoke to thread the drawstring bike into the shorts so it was all nice, bike-related, bikey bikelstuff to get it put bike together again.

Today was my third bike ride of the week and the fourth of 2019. Felt pretty good!

1. Forgot to start Fitbit’s connected-GPS at the beginning of the ride, started it about a half-mile into it, but it doesn’t seem to matter because the Fitbit didn’t even start tracking GPS for the first portion of the ride anyway. More on that later.
2. Sit bones are adjusting to the saddle again. Felt nice and cozy, like a hen settling onto her clutch of eggs.
3. Saw a motorcycle cop on the bike path, not evidently in hot pursuit of some perp either. Just cruising along. Another cyclist stopped and gave the “what the hell, man?!” palms-up gesture as we were both bemused by Mr. Johnny Law(less)’s antics.
4. My rear fender seatstay bridge bracket broke. Hit a bump when crossing a street and heard the sound of plastic tinkling on the ground. Stopped to make sure it wasn’t my bike falling apart which, much to my everlasting horror, it was. Thankfully, I had some zip-ties which appear to have nominally fixed it. Gotta remember to get a new bracket and more zip ties.
   
5. The big tree that was blocking the path the other day was cleared so the path was opened again. Since I haven’t mentioned this before it’s probably even less interesting to note than it sounded.
6. At my turnaround point I noticed the connected-GPS wasn’t either connected or GPS-ing so had to start it again. So there’s 7.9 or so miles that aren’t GPS’ed. Sorta too bad since I’ve never GPS’ed that section yet so I’ll try to get it later.
7. Saw something like a Heron on the ride back, near the curve where the trail becomes the segment where ducks and geese like to hang out on the stream.
   
8. When I got home I did one set of “sliding” hamstring curls with my feet supported on an old skateboard. Gonna start doing more sets of these as I get more miles to help counteract the general “pushing” nature of bicycling and have better-balanced leg development so hopefully I don’t develop knee-tendon related injuries, ostensibly from overdeveloped quads (relative to the rest of the leg) like I’ve had happen before.

So 30 some-odd miles for the week so far. Not much but not bad, though not good for this late in the year. Might ride again tomorrow. Might not. I do want to take a Jamaica ride soon but since it’s a limestone trail that’s gotten soft from all the rain recently I might give it another day to dry out.

Also, trying to get back into a calisthenics routine, adding a new exercise or two to my workouts every week or so. Today, did two sets of chinups, two sets of dips, two sets of bodyweight rows (foot elevated), two sets of pushups and two sets of ab-wheel rollouts. (Actually, used the aforementioned skateboard for the “ab-wheel”.) Not too shabby. Definitely feeling it a bit but in a good way, probably gonna feel the abs later, maybe in a not-so-good way but hopefully not.