Part of my new work out which is primarily made up of Bicycle riding, is my new shoes and pedals. They are super cool. The new shoes are black and silver with metal cleats that are counter sunk. They clip into the pedals with a super resounding and confidence inspiring “clunk”. The warning from the technician Emily @ auls bike shop was to make sure to unclip your feet when you stop. They mentioned something like a 3 to 4 ‘Dork falls’. Those are the ones where you stop at a traffic light and tip over because you’re on your way to the ground while you’re still trying to get you foot off the pedal. So far no falls

But what do these shoes provide me? some push and some pull and some steady feet when I’m getting a little tired and sloppy. Really it helps make my riding a little more efficient. It offers a good pull on the foot, and a good push. Allowing for some serious hill climb ability. I did my long hill ride again, more on that later, but the shoes really seem to help a lot on smaller hills. I took the Defazio bridge in 2 gears higher than normal. It was a good time.

The big hill climb, it was a great ride, hard but great. I took off early, yes I set my clock, and got riding early. I took the garden way road over the south Alton Baker park way into Springfield. I took off from Springfield and back over the A street bridge and back into Eugene. I continues my journey over and south to 30th avenue to Lane Community College. At this point I got to reach for my new water bottle. I took a good gulp, and checked my watch 7:40 am. I started my accent onto 30th. I’ve ridden my bike over 30th avenue hill once before. about 6 weeks ago if I remember correctly. It took just about all I could give on that ride. I was whipped. I had to stop about 5 maybe 6 times on that ride. It was all I could do to make it up that hill. I did eventually make it up the hill. But I didn’t and wasn’t able to get home. But this ride was different.

I did have to stop once on the ride up the hill. I need to remember a good pace. so I stopped, got my water, got my breath, set the gearing for the lowest hill climb gears that I’ve got and whala!!! I made it up and over without stopping. 20 minutes all in all. 20 minutes from Lane Community College to Hilyard Street. To me this seems amazing. I was pretty stoked. I made the rest of the ride home, back into the town and back home. I was really pleased that I made it home this time. Didn’t need to call Liz for a pickup this time. I was pretty happy when I got home. I had an incredible endorphin rush going. It’s getting a bit addictive. I was in a sweet spot. I really had something there. I felt like I could have ridden another 30 minutes or so. I felt it was a good spot to stop and enjoy the rush of success.

So as of this posting I’m officially at 381#’s down from 436# In March. so 55#’s down and a lot more to go. so this is the beginning of my logging and blogging of my workouts and my weight loss. Hopefully it will be of some importance to myself and possibly others.