A Medley of Extemporanea

First long ride

Apr03

by berry on April 3, 2010 at 9:09 pm

I did my first long bike ride of the season. It was not too ambitious, but it was good because it highlighted areas that I have to improve on over the course of the summer.

I cycled from my house to Penny’s Fudge Factory in Fitzroy Harbour. It was 76 km in total and I completed it in 3 hours and 45 minutes “running time”. This included actually stopping in at Penny’s, and several breaks I took along the way.

Areas of improvement:

Ensure that I have a phone with me (I left mine on the bench as I was packing my satchel).
Ensure that I know where I’m going (I took a wrong turn and added 6 km to my trip).
Ensure that I apply my sunscreen properly (I missed three spots, and they are extremely tender now).
Ensure that I don’t lollygag at home when I have a 4 hour ride ahead of me (I was out in the middle of the day, hence the massive sunburn and slight sunstroke I felt at the end of it).
Ensure that I know if the place I’m heading to is open (I reached Penny’s only to find a “We open May 1st” sign out front. Happily, Penny (I assume) was selling fudge bunnies for Easter).

That’s it. I also wish I had my camera with me. When the family goes away this summer, I might pick myself up a cheap one, so I don’t miss out on some nice shots that I could have taken.

1 Comment

It has begun!

Mar10

by berry on March 10, 2010 at 1:48 pm

Posted In: Uncategorized

I’ve started biking to work! 22km and 65 minutes later, I had cold toes (from not wearing booties), rosy cheeks, and an attitude of superiority.

It was extremely fresh when I left this morning, -3C outside and -8 with the wind, which as always was in my face the entire ride. My usual route is still under a bit of snow, so I decided to stay on the road the entire trip. I should have, but didn’t end up doing any route finding before I left, and ended up taking a bit of a roundabout way of getting to Baseline. I’ve now looked it up, and I will be cutting about 1.5 km from my return leg. I’m hoping that unlike later in the year, the wind doesn’t change direction in the afternoon, as I would like a nice push home.

Another thing that I did differently on this ride is ditch my headphones. I don’t mind wearing them on the paths, but I do not feel comfortable with them in on Baseline. My solution? A handy battery-powered speaker that plugs into my player’s headphone jack. I could listen to my music and still be situationally aware.

Note to Dan: I also solved the scarf problem. I have a beard.

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Truth in Cycling

Mar09

by berry on March 9, 2010 at 9:28 am

Posted In: Uncategorized

I’ve worked out a formula based on speed, weight and time to get a rough estimate of calorie burn for my cycling trips. Interestingly, it hits a bit of a plateau in the middle speed ranges, as shown below. If my calculations are correct, then, I can take it a bit easier going in without hitting a calorie penalty (or, hopefully, needing a shower). On the way home I can boot it, make up the time from the morning, and hop straight into the pool to refresh myself. Win/Win/Win/Win. 🙂

dist (km)	20
spd(km/h)	15	17	20	25	30	32	35
Calories	556.81	737	835.49	835.21	835.17	913.5	954.46
hours	1.33	1.18	1	0.8	0.67	0.63	0.57

Note that I have correlated these calculations with my heart rate monitor (which is probably using a variation of the same formula, since I worked mine out from plotting various responses from different “Calorie counting” Web sites). Bonus points if you can tell me how much I weighed when I made this graph!

4 Comments

Oop! A week almost passed! Quick! Brain dump!

Feb15

by berry on February 15, 2010 at 6:28 pm

Posted In: Uncategorized

It happens. I had a lot to do, and little time to do it in, so the social aspects of the Internets had to suffer for a while. I’ve taken care of some things that I’ve let slip by the wayside; and had some good times with family and friends.

The Kanata United Church Book Fair is coming up in a couple of weeks. I didn’t go last time for sundry reasons, But I’m ready for a triumphant return! Honestly, my reading fell off the rails the last few years thanks to other commitments, but I’m back in the game, having read as many books so far this year as I did last. Oop. One thing that hung over my head: I hadn’t input any new books into my LibraryThing account for nearly two years! This is fundamentally important to have up to date before going to such a fair, so I don’t end up with triples of books. I am looking for books that I really enjoyed as a child that are no longer available in the library(!!!), so that I can pass my love for these stories along to Trevor and Owen. One that I’m always on the lookout for is The Machine-Gunners by Robert Westall.

Chrispy rented a studio and took photos of us this weekend too. An example:

The black backdrop makes the photo look extremely dramatic, don’t you think?

Plus it was Dan‘s birthday, where he finally joined me in my decrepitude (Note the handsome Dr. Who scarf wearing gentleman in one of the photos on that page).