Biker's High

Runner's high? HA! Those guys need to get a bike.

I went on my first real ride of the year today thanks to Rachel. I had been itching to get on my bike, but was concerned my legs would turn to jelly at the first hill I encountered. So I have been putting off riding my bike. Even though I know I love it.

Today was a great day for a ride. We waited until the graduation festivities subsided and headed out of town. I was a little concerned about how warm it was, but it ended up perfect. Within two miles of leaving Rachel's house, I knew I'd made a good decision to just do it.

We headed down to Lake Monroe via 446 and Knightridge. Rachel was on her sweet new Giant carbon road bike. It's pretty sleek looking. And I continued with my gadget testing; I had my normal bike computer, my iPhone, and my Garmin on my handlebars!

We made it to Lake Monroe and took a brief rest to watch the boat traffic.

 

Then turned around to go up the hill. 

We encountered another cyclists just as we started up who asked us if we were ready for torture and then proceeded to lap us. That's okay. We were enjoying the ride, not racing.

The hill was pretty eventful though. We were scared by a bunch of wild turkeys (or maybe a deer. All I know is it was big and in the woods.)  And I was seriously mooned by an old guy, which was fairly amusing.

We made it to the top and continued on back to Rachel's house. We chatted there a little bit about how great it felt to get that ride in and how we are looking forward to the summer bike trip next month and then I headed home. 

And here's the mountain of stats I collected:

                             Bike Computer                  Garmin                               iPhone

Distance:               20.390 miles                      20.12 miles                        21.06 miles

Time:                     1:31:33                              1:42:41                              1:52:29

Average Speed:     13.3 mph                           13.3 mph                           11.2 mph

Calories Burned:    701.4 calories                    1211 calories                      714 kCal

Clearly the calorie count varies greatly, but I already knew that is quite estimated anyway. The Garmin and bike computer are very close, especially since I forgot to start it right away. And I'm going to have to repeat this test with my iPhone, because I didn't bother to pause it when we stopped and it doesn't tell you the difference on the mapmyfitness website. But I have found the autopause and turned that on, so hopefully it will be more in line with the other two. Although I think I've already decided that I'm going to use my Garmin on the bike trip, just because its battery life is much greater.

Anyway, it was a great day to be on two wheels! I did much better than I was expecting and that makes me feel awesome!