Fat Kid’s Ironman Fitness Blog

I made it: 5,000 miles!

As promised, the family and I went out of our final bike ride of the year. Aunt Cynthia, Mom, Saffron, and Zola joined Dad for his final ride to reach 5,000 miles for the year.

Last year I rode well over 5,000 road miles. But this year, I took up triathlon, trained for an Ironman, and discovered how much fun Spin class could be.  The result was that I was off my pace to achieve 5,000 cycle miles this year. Realizing this last week, I decided to make one final push to pile on the miles for the calendar year.

After taking feedback from all of you readers, that counting Spin class miles was a fair thing to do for reaching this milestone, and pouring on some extra miles this past week, I had only 3 miles to go to cross the 5,000 mile mark for the year. So the plan was to take the family out for a nice leisurely ride down the Burke Gilman trail from our house out a couple miles and back. Maybe we’d make it to Mathew’s Beach Park so the kids could play on the swings and slides.

Aunt Cynthia decided she wanted to join us for the ride, and Zola was very excited about riding with Cynthia! So around noon this morning we all loaded up the two Trek 7100 hybrids, my new Redline 925 fixed single speed, and two half/trailer-bikes. The original plan was for Dad to pull Saffron, Cynthia to pull Zola, and Mom to ride shotgun. Things almost worked out as planned.

We had to rent an extra half bike from one of our local bike shops. Recycled Cycles is a cool shop in Seattle which has a bit of a “bike messenger click” feel to it. You will regularly see staff members heading up the monthly critical mass rides downtown. They also sponsor a pretty serious criterion cycle team and are the premier shop for used cycle parts in Seattle. They also happen to be about a mile from our house and offer bike rentals, and fortunately half-bike rentals.

After setting up the bikes we headed out. Only to get about 15 feet before realizing there was a problem. Apparently the half-bike we rented had an unusual connection bracket that didn’t quite fit on the seat post of the Trek hybrid. We ended up messing around with it, and after stopping several times on the trail in the first half mile of our journey, we realized we were going to have to reconfigure all the bikes. We eventually settled on Dad pulling Zola on the rented half-bike, Mom pulling Saffron on our half-bike, and Cynthia riding along solo. Big thanks to the random cyclist who stopped to lend us a 4mm Allen-wrench to make some on-the-fly changes to the setup.

Once we got to 3 miles out, we stopped and posed for the obligatory photo shoot. Mathew’s Beach was still another 4 miles away, which meant a 14 mile round trip. In retrospect, this was more that Mom and Aunt Cynthia really wanted to bite off. So we kept going for another half mile and turned around, making the total trip 7 miles.

When it was all said and done, 2006 was a great year for fitness. I trained over 492 hours for the year. I completed my first Ironman, my first Marathon, I had a great year of Cycling, and it was great to cap it off with the thing I love most of all, spending time with my Family. Here’s to 2006, and hope that 2007 is even better!

Filed under: Cycle, Diet, Family, Fitness, Friends, Ironman, Living Seattle, Marathons, Run, Swim, Weightloss, triathlon  |  Digg! this story.  |  Leave a Comment