Big Bike Week!

October is NOT a big biking month for me normally, but this month has been great so far. Over the last 6 days, I've logged 93 miles of biking: 2 days of biking to work (as I mentioned I was doing more of a few weeks ago), a 31 mile ride that had 25 miles a bit harder to start, and then 2 rides today (a "longer" ride of 36 miles and then riding a bit with my boys).

Damp trails this morning after lots of rain in the past 24 hours.
(It was worse than this - this was a good patch where I felt safe taking a photo while riding.)


36 miles all around town.


Elevation. The 1st circle is up along 35, down to Water St, and up and down a bit
of Big Rivers. The 2nd circle is up Ohio, down the High Bridge, and up Ramsey.


Alley still damp 6 hours after my ride!

The first photo of the damp trail wasn't bad, but the trail wasn't good on parts of Big Rivers, most of Water Street, and it was pretty spotty on the city streets as well. So I didn't push it too hard (especially while cornering!). I just rode, and finished with a 19.6 mph average.

Then after 5 mins of warming my toes by the fire, the boys and I hopped on our bikes and we did a little tour along the river:

Minnehaha Falls flowing well after some rain!

So this October already has 148 biking miles, which is easily my biggest October since logging my miles digitally in 2009 (but I'm pretty sure 2005 is bigger as I was averaging 100 miles/week from early Sept through Thanksgiving). Looking back online through my training log, I see monthly October miles that look like this (starting with 2022 and going back through 2009): 4, 2, 15, 0, 48, 97, 36, 44, 0, 0, 17, 0, 71, and 0. (Those last 2 years were both just biking with the boys to cheer on my wife at the TC Marathon!)

(And over those same years, here's my trainer time or spinning time for the month of October, shown as hours and minutes: 10:53, 12:29, 8:45, 0, 4:00, 3:29, 1:42, 0:43, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2:30, and 2:00.)

I have no big biking goals for the rest of the month, other than to keep biking as much as I can to work - I've biked the last 6 out of 7 classes at the U, only missing the day I did the make-up TC 10 Mile as I wasn't feeling great later that day, so I chose to drive.