The Heat is Off!

Not only has mother nature finally turned off the furnace in the Northeast, but the pressure cooker that life has put me in the past two weeks has started to decompress.  Last week I wrapped up two major things:  a project at work that had been ongoing for 10 months and a 6-credit summer class that had my head spinning for the past 6 weeks.  While I do start my fall class tomorrow, it should be at a much less dizzying pace.  When you factor in some home, car and dental issues, it’s amazing that I have been on my Trikke at all the past month in a half.

The good news is that during that spell I mapped out 3 more Lehigh Valley Trikke routes, and I will be writing up articles to share them over the next week.  I also had a great ride of over 8 miles doing laps at Rodale Fitness Park last Monday night.  This included 24 mild but sustained hill climbs, and I only ground to a halt on 3 of those climbs.  I have been stopping less often for breaks, which is something I also experienced doing a non-stop 15 mile bike ride the prior week.  This progress surprises me, because I have been doing very little outdoor exercise this summer because of the heat wave and my busy schedule.  I have fit in regular kettlebell workouts in this time though, and I firmly believe this cross-training effort deserves the credit for improving my riding.

My next goal is to plan LSM (Last Saturday of the Month) rides for both September and October.  I was recently added as an Organizer to the Trikke Riders of Pennsylvania Meetup Group (http://www.meetup.com/TrikkePA/), so I will be posting those rides there.  Because this is an established group, I will be holding the rides closer to the Delaware Valley instead of the Lehigh Valley.  I also plan to create a Lehigh Valley Meetup Group, and hope that members of each will occasionally go out of their home territory to ride with each other.  Although there are plenty of places to Trikke solo in the Lehigh Valley, it is proving more difficult to find a good spot here for group rides.  My leading contenders at the moment are Rodale Fitness Park and the paved Portion of the D&L Trail in Easton.

I’d like to thank all of you that have stuck with this blog during the past few weeks, and I’ll look forward to sharing more stuff with you during the coming week.