After finding out that the 100 mile ride didn't technically qualify I decided to qualify two days after the 100 mile ride and work my usual commute to work on my unicycle into the equation.
I did a lot of night riding on these rides, and both days were reallllly cold and windy.
Woke up and stretched and had a banana before gearing up for the cold and windy weather outside. My usual ride into work is about 8 miles, but I decided to extend it to 10 miles in the morning. All of this was done in pretty bad wind that was almost blowing me off my unicycle. I got into work a little later than I usually do and brough my uni to my cubicle since I forgot my bike lock and went down to the gym to shower.
Monday's after work I usually ride to my friend's place and watch heroes and eat some pizza since Jerry Sub and Pizza has 5 dollar larges on Monday. After work I put on my light and rode 10 miles out of the way from my office and hooked up with the W&OD trail again and rode the same direction I rode on Saturday. The point to this was that I would ride 10 miles down and turn around and end at my friend's place, so that I would do 20 miles after work before eating some pizza. When I got to his place I was freezing cold since the whole ride was in the dark and the wind picked up even more than the morning! I was wishing I had brought my balaclava with me. Either way, I got inside to the warmth and realized that my toes were numb. I took off my socks and saw my big toes had lost most of their color. It was pretty brutal outside (for me at least), but I knew that I had pizza coming.
My friends and I sat down and ate 3 large cheese pizzas and watched the last episode of Heroes. By now I had warmed up and put back on my cycle clothes and an extra pair of socks and unicycled home (10 miles).
I got back at 1130pm or so and took a shower and went to bed.
Monday's stats: distance: 40 miles/ 64.4 km
Night riding: 30 miles / 48.3km
Strong winds: 40 miles/ 64.4km
Rating: 177
(Didn't include the cold temperatures or the elevation profile, but looking up the profile and calculating the ascend/descend miles is annoying.)
Most of the ride was in the dark and all of it was in strong winds...which made me wish I had longer cranks than 114.
12/04/2007
239
Same routine as Monday morning (woke up/stretched/banana), unicycled to work with an additional 2 miles to make it 10 in the morning. Today I wanted to do something different though and decided to call up my friend Zach again and unicycle to DC after work. He decided to join me and we planned on meeting up after work outside my office.
Once again...it was windy...even windier than yesterday! It was also colder, but in the morning riding into work it wasn't too bad since the sun was out. However after work at around 530pm it was completely dark and freezing outside! The actual temperature was below freezing, but according to weather.com it "felt like" 22F. The wind made it horrible, but I brought my balaclava with me into work and decided to just go for it anyway. Zach and I cycled from my office and made our way onto the W&OD trail. I put some of those chemical toe warmer packs into my shoes, but they didnt seem to be helping much. My mouth was getting almost numb so I put the bottom part of the balaclava over it and kept on riding till we reached Whole Foods in Vienna. We reached it after 12 miles or so of riding. I bought some food and warmed up inside. We took our time and stayed in there for a good 30 minutes or so and I put another set of warmers into my shoes (this time hand warmers) and my toes were starting to feel the heat.
I looked ridiculous by the way...with a balaclava, a helmet with a huge light on top, clear lens glasses to block the wind and a bright orange bike jacket. I got a lot of strange looks.
We left and rode the rest of the way on the trail and connected with the Custis trail and kept on riding through Arlington and eventually made our way to the end of the trail and crossed the Key Bridge over into Georgetown. I rode with traffic on M street and put my light on strobe to get more attention from cars. I got a lot of "WOAH, WHAT THE HELL!"s from people and "WHAT IS THAT" from others who were strolling through Georgetown. I had to hop in place a lot at the traffic lights and eventually we made it down to Pennsylvania ave and turned right and rode all the way down to the White House where I took some victory photos. Afterwards, we decided to just stroll around for a while and rode down to the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial and around the WWII memorial and around the mall for a nice night time DC ride.
The funniest comment I got was when I was coming up to a couple behind them and my headlight engulfed their path and a woman turned around and went "AH! Oh...I thought that was from an alien!" .
Anyway, we met my friend's sister at the Smithsonian metro stop and got on the metro back home. A few people talked to me on the metro and asked the usual questions.
Overall...it was a very windy and cold night, but it was a fun ride. Riding around the monuments in DC at night is really cool. They look a lot better and there are no annoying groups of tourists blocking the paths.
Stats:
Distance: 10 miles in morning, ~30 at night to get to the trail and to DC and including the distance we went from Georgetown to the Monuments and around.
There were definitely some large Ascents and Descents on the ride, but I am too lazy to look up the elevation profile for this ride, so I won't include it.
All in the wind, 30 miles at night.
Distance: 40 mi
Wind: 40 mi
Night Riding: 30 miles
Extreme Temperatures: 30 miles (I'll include it today because WOW it was freezing outside)
Rating: 239
I fit the ride in with my normal unicycling commute, and it turned out not to be that bad. I am still surprisingly not sore at all and have no knee pain like I usually do. I have done 180 miles of riding since Saturday, 85 of which were at night. I'm glad I bought that light!