This Is Definitely Different

And by "this", I mean riding a Singlespeed. Today was my first day out on the mostly complete buildup of the singlespeed 26" mtb. I have to say that my muscles definitely feel sore in places I haven't felt sore in a while. It's not much different than riding a road bike when you are on the flats, and my gearing of 42x18 was well suited to cruising along on the flat roads, but as soon as I got to a hill I was habitually trying to shift but there was nothing there so I stayed seated and just kept grinding it out. I tried to avoid going down roads where I knew there were really steep hills but I tried to search out the roads where I knew there were long, gradual climbs because those types of climbs are perfect to help work on building some muscle, and I'm pretty sure today's ride will help with that. Downhills are pretty fun too because although I could obviously just coast down them, I wanted to work on some leg speed as well, so I was spinning out the 42x18 as fast as I could on some of the hills, probably in the 130-140rpm range. The only unfortunate part about today's ride was the really wet, somewhat muddy roads and I came back with my feet soaked and most of my body was wet and mud-splattered. So, how long did I make my first SS ride? Well, I wanted to really go for a while on it just to take on all sorts of roads with it and I tried to find some trails to ride as well but there was too much snow on those so I went from New Berlin to Waukesha, around the west side of Waukesha and then back to Muskego and then back to New Berlin for a grand total of 3 hours, 45 minutes. I wanted to do 4 hours but I was bonking at the end and I took a shortcut home and I'm glad I did because I was spinning pretty slow at the end there and I got back right before sunset. So that's a good workout hey, well, that's not even all I did today! This morning before the ride I managed to get Melissa to go snowshoeing as well before the snow goes away with this impending rain and warm weather. We went and did some local cross-country trails for an hour and 10 minutes and worked up a good sweat doing that as well before I hit the bike. So the exercise total for today is a pretty nice 4 hours and 55 minutes worth of work and tonight I'll be eating a good dinner, having some hot green tea (and maybe a beer), and then hitting the bed early-ish, maybe 11:00 or so. Tomorrow is iffy as far as the weather right now, only a 40% chance of rain and a high about 44 degrees, definitely warm enough for a ride so hopefully the rain holds off. If it does I'm tempted to take out the road bike but we'll see, I really don't want to go through the crappy roads with it so it may be another day on the SS. If it rains then it'll be 4 hours on the trainer/rollers, kinda like last weekend, 2 hours or so on the rollers, then an hour of muscle work on the trainer and then another hour on the rollers. Let's hope it doesn't rain. Well, that's it for now, I've posted pics below of me after my ride. Until next time.......