Year of the Bike

2007 is the Year of the Bike! It is my area with the most room for improvement.

Fortunately, my husband enjoys biking too. He has no interest in swimming or running so triathlons are out, but he agreed to do several cycling events with me this year. Yippee! We're registered for the Capital to Capital event on May 5, and we're planning to register for Heart of Virginia once it opens.

Capital to Capital is a ride between Richmond and Jamestown. Cyclists have the option to bike a half century (50 miles), which is one way, or return for the full century. We may bike to the half way point one-way then turn back for a half century that still returns us to our car. The trail is supposed to be really nice - can't wait to see it. I'd like to think I could do the whole thing, but that's pretty aggressive training in eight weeks. Maybe next year!

Heart of Virginia is a two day event with various distance options each day. This will be the one in which we will accept a longer distance challenge, plus experience two consecutive days in the saddle which I've never done before. I suspect that I will find out fairly quickly whether I need a different saddle or not! Hopefully, I'll make that discovery during training and not during the event.

I need to figure out a good training plan for us and then whether we can do at least some of our long training rides together, which would be amazing. I'm thinking of booking our neighbors (twin eighth graders) once a week. They can decide who gets to sit on any given day. We'll have to work around baseball practice and games for both kids, plus Rainbow's dance, but having a set schedule works much better for me to make sure I actually do it.

I'm excited to get out and ride, and having an event scheduled will be very motivating to increase distance!