FOR THE RECORD: Riding around the world will not be one of my goals for 2011. Maybe next year? I doubt that too!!!
Anyone up for Yo-Yo tricks? I have heard "around the world" is one of the most famous yo yo tricks that most have tried out. Of course when I tried it as a kid, my mother would always say, "Kenny be careful...you could yo yo your eye out!" Okay..you know I just made that up. It was the kid who had "BB gun envy" (hey BOTW...would that be gun porn?) in A Christmas Story that was warned he would shoot his eye out. In my case, I wish my Yellow Shirter YO-YOING PHYLLIS would have given me a similar warning like, "Ken be careful when you first start yo yoing in the valley...you could blow your knee out!" Unfortunately, without any warning...that's exactly what happened...I blew my knee out.
January 1, 2011 marked the first official day of my attempt to become a "power commuter". With rear rack and panniers attached to my brand new hand-me-down 1983 Miyata touring bike (thanks again for the Christmas present...Yellow Shirter BRO MIYATA!!!), I pedaled North to Marc 's grocery store on State Rd in CFalls to pick up a few items for our holiday dinner in the early afternoon. The weather, to start out, was actually pleasant for a New Year's day in NEO. Temps were in the low 40's, but winds were out of the South at 15-20 mph. Cyclists can never complain about a tail wind!
While packing up my purchases in my panniers (saddle bags) under the protection of Marc's store front overhang, I could feel the temp immediately dropping and the skies burst opened with a deluge of a down pour. In full power commuter mode, I smiled, mounted under the overhang, and pushed off to pedal back home.
I only rode a small section of State Rd. (you should have seen the looks on the faces of the motorist that I shared the road with. I interpreted their looks this way, "Happy New Years you crazy old fool!!!") before tucking my way onto more secluded side streets, yet there was no reprieve from the rain or the winds that began gusting in my face at 35-40 mph. It was fantastic logging my first 7.5 miles on my ride tracking excel spreadsheet for this first Holiday ride...even if I felt a bit like one of my favorite bluegrass groups...a "Soggy Bottom Boy".
Through out January, regardless of the chilly temps, I managed fourteen commutes (a minimum of 14.2 miles for each round trip commute), completed an epic metric century ride (62.9 miles) on the Northwest section of the Emerald Neckless covering Rocky River, Mill Stream Run, and Brecksville reservations on Jan. 31st with average temps in the low teens (wind chill...a bit lower), and completed a solo Super Bowl Rally ride of 80 miles on Feb 6th...the Sunday before my scheduled outpatient hernia repair operation on Monday Feb 7th.
Prior to the surgery at AGMC in Fairlawn, the anesthesiologist asked about my current medical condition since I previously had open heart surgery on May 17, 2009. When I told him of my prior day's ride of 80 miles, he was convinced that I was going to be an ok surgery risk.
After being cleared from recovery, the recovery nurse wheeled me to the front entrance where wife Renee was waiting to transport me home. I eagerly asked what the Doctor had said about my home recovery plan. She said I would be good to go in a few days and had permission to be back on bike within 7 days!!! (I never even asked/begged for permission). They must have known I would be chomping at the bit to be back in the saddle.
During my home recovery, my buddy Mike B. did swing by to take me to a bike repair workshop at my favorite LBS that CAPTAIN BOB was hosting. That's where I met YO-Yoing Phylliss for the first time.
Phyllis was attending the Wheel & Wrench bike repair workshop because of a loss she experienced in 2010. When we met, I asked her how long she had been riding. She laughed and replied, "Oh maybe 60 or 70 years". She then went on the share the sad news of losing her life time riding partner, chief bike mechanic, and husband who had passed away from an extended illness.
When I asked, maybe without enough sensitivity, how many miles she actually rode in 2010, Phyllis began to cry. When she regained her composure, while I was rubbing her shoulder, she could not come up with her 2010 mileage. On the rebound though, that's when she quipped me, "Have you ever Yo-Yoed out of the Valley". My reply, "Say WHAT?"
Well, I first heard of the challenges of riding out of the valley, within the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, while participating in "spinning classes" at the CFalls Natatorium. During my first year of riding, in the early spring, I did take on my first climb up and out on Truxel Rd and more insanely, I traversed North on Northampton Road from Portage Trails at least four times to get to the valley floor from my house near 18th and Chestnut. I later learned that it was far more fun to ride down Portage Trail Path to get to Akron Peninsula Road.
On my first ABC ride on May 27th, we rode westerly out of the valley on Major Rd to Hinkley Lake. All of my other rides with the club did not originate from the valley (once was enough for my first year!) As summer progressed, I got hooked up with the ROMEOs who climbed out of the valley on almost each of their weekday rides via the 3.1 mile trek up Truxel Rd. All Yellow Shirting ROMEOs are troopers! By the end of the fall, I did manage to climb each of the east side ascents, but those climbs were just done to say to myself that I could do it. What Yo-Yoing Phyllis was taking about was a completely different trick...repetitively ascending and descending the valley climbs.
My first post hernia surgery ride was on Valentine’s Day...it was a sweet heart of a Tuesday ride to the Taylor Library at 4.1 miles. I track my rides in an excel spreadsheet with weekly subtotals for 7 days spanning Tuesday thru Monday. At the end of February 21st (first full week back in the saddle) I logged 144 miles, for the WE 2/28 I logged 203 including a 71 mile route to Alliance, and for WE 3/7 I logged 205 miles including my first 2011 Century on Sunday 3/6. For the first time this year, I used my road bike with clipless SPD pedals on the Century and noted that my right knee had a little bit of soreness during some parts of the ride.
The following week, I cut back my mileage and started to work on increasing speed with more attention to interval/cardio training. For the WE 3/14 I booked 121 miles, but those included my first YO-YOING on the east side of the valley at 47 miles (climbing and rolling back down Thesis, Bath, Wetmore, Quick, and Truxell) on Sunday 3/13 and then riding an easy paced 33 miles with the ROMEOs out of Truxel on Monday 3/14.
Come Tuesday, when I set off to run an errand and visit my local bike shop, I realized I had a significant knee issue. I could barely pedal back home. Fortunately, I got the FLU (could not ride because of how cruddy I felt) on 3/15 and was off bike for two complete weeks until my first attempt back in the saddle on my birthday on March 23rd. Dang, it is tough to get old. Maybe I need to check in with Phyllis to see if she has any secrets!
FOR THE RECORD: I made some bone head mistakes that could have ruined the base foundation of rides that I worked on during the first three months of the year. I'll blog more about the causes and solutions later.
So, if it is NOT setting a goal to ride around the world this year, and, if yo-yoing around the world is too risky for one's eye or one's knee, what the heck is the reason the topic "Around the World" popped in my head this morning? All I can say is, "Skype made me do it!"
January 1, 2011 marked the first official day of my attempt to become a "power commuter". With rear rack and panniers attached to my brand new hand-me-down 1983 Miyata touring bike (thanks again for the Christmas present...Yellow Shirter BRO MIYATA!!!), I pedaled North to Marc 's grocery store on State Rd in CFalls to pick up a few items for our holiday dinner in the early afternoon. The weather, to start out, was actually pleasant for a New Year's day in NEO. Temps were in the low 40's, but winds were out of the South at 15-20 mph. Cyclists can never complain about a tail wind!
While packing up my purchases in my panniers (saddle bags) under the protection of Marc's store front overhang, I could feel the temp immediately dropping and the skies burst opened with a deluge of a down pour. In full power commuter mode, I smiled, mounted under the overhang, and pushed off to pedal back home.
I only rode a small section of State Rd. (you should have seen the looks on the faces of the motorist that I shared the road with. I interpreted their looks this way, "Happy New Years you crazy old fool!!!") before tucking my way onto more secluded side streets, yet there was no reprieve from the rain or the winds that began gusting in my face at 35-40 mph. It was fantastic logging my first 7.5 miles on my ride tracking excel spreadsheet for this first Holiday ride...even if I felt a bit like one of my favorite bluegrass groups...a "Soggy Bottom Boy".
Through out January, regardless of the chilly temps, I managed fourteen commutes (a minimum of 14.2 miles for each round trip commute), completed an epic metric century ride (62.9 miles) on the Northwest section of the Emerald Neckless covering Rocky River, Mill Stream Run, and Brecksville reservations on Jan. 31st with average temps in the low teens (wind chill...a bit lower), and completed a solo Super Bowl Rally ride of 80 miles on Feb 6th...the Sunday before my scheduled outpatient hernia repair operation on Monday Feb 7th.
Prior to the surgery at AGMC in Fairlawn, the anesthesiologist asked about my current medical condition since I previously had open heart surgery on May 17, 2009. When I told him of my prior day's ride of 80 miles, he was convinced that I was going to be an ok surgery risk.
After being cleared from recovery, the recovery nurse wheeled me to the front entrance where wife Renee was waiting to transport me home. I eagerly asked what the Doctor had said about my home recovery plan. She said I would be good to go in a few days and had permission to be back on bike within 7 days!!! (I never even asked/begged for permission). They must have known I would be chomping at the bit to be back in the saddle.
During my home recovery, my buddy Mike B. did swing by to take me to a bike repair workshop at my favorite LBS that CAPTAIN BOB was hosting. That's where I met YO-Yoing Phylliss for the first time.
Phyllis was attending the Wheel & Wrench bike repair workshop because of a loss she experienced in 2010. When we met, I asked her how long she had been riding. She laughed and replied, "Oh maybe 60 or 70 years". She then went on the share the sad news of losing her life time riding partner, chief bike mechanic, and husband who had passed away from an extended illness.
When I asked, maybe without enough sensitivity, how many miles she actually rode in 2010, Phyllis began to cry. When she regained her composure, while I was rubbing her shoulder, she could not come up with her 2010 mileage. On the rebound though, that's when she quipped me, "Have you ever Yo-Yoed out of the Valley". My reply, "Say WHAT?"
Well, I first heard of the challenges of riding out of the valley, within the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, while participating in "spinning classes" at the CFalls Natatorium. During my first year of riding, in the early spring, I did take on my first climb up and out on Truxel Rd and more insanely, I traversed North on Northampton Road from Portage Trails at least four times to get to the valley floor from my house near 18th and Chestnut. I later learned that it was far more fun to ride down Portage Trail Path to get to Akron Peninsula Road.
On my first ABC ride on May 27th, we rode westerly out of the valley on Major Rd to Hinkley Lake. All of my other rides with the club did not originate from the valley (once was enough for my first year!) As summer progressed, I got hooked up with the ROMEOs who climbed out of the valley on almost each of their weekday rides via the 3.1 mile trek up Truxel Rd. All Yellow Shirting ROMEOs are troopers! By the end of the fall, I did manage to climb each of the east side ascents, but those climbs were just done to say to myself that I could do it. What Yo-Yoing Phyllis was taking about was a completely different trick...repetitively ascending and descending the valley climbs.
My first post hernia surgery ride was on Valentine’s Day...it was a sweet heart of a Tuesday ride to the Taylor Library at 4.1 miles. I track my rides in an excel spreadsheet with weekly subtotals for 7 days spanning Tuesday thru Monday. At the end of February 21st (first full week back in the saddle) I logged 144 miles, for the WE 2/28 I logged 203 including a 71 mile route to Alliance, and for WE 3/7 I logged 205 miles including my first 2011 Century on Sunday 3/6. For the first time this year, I used my road bike with clipless SPD pedals on the Century and noted that my right knee had a little bit of soreness during some parts of the ride.
The following week, I cut back my mileage and started to work on increasing speed with more attention to interval/cardio training. For the WE 3/14 I booked 121 miles, but those included my first YO-YOING on the east side of the valley at 47 miles (climbing and rolling back down Thesis, Bath, Wetmore, Quick, and Truxell) on Sunday 3/13 and then riding an easy paced 33 miles with the ROMEOs out of Truxel on Monday 3/14.
Come Tuesday, when I set off to run an errand and visit my local bike shop, I realized I had a significant knee issue. I could barely pedal back home. Fortunately, I got the FLU (could not ride because of how cruddy I felt) on 3/15 and was off bike for two complete weeks until my first attempt back in the saddle on my birthday on March 23rd. Dang, it is tough to get old. Maybe I need to check in with Phyllis to see if she has any secrets!
FOR THE RECORD: I made some bone head mistakes that could have ruined the base foundation of rides that I worked on during the first three months of the year. I'll blog more about the causes and solutions later.
So, if it is NOT setting a goal to ride around the world this year, and, if yo-yoing around the world is too risky for one's eye or one's knee, what the heck is the reason the topic "Around the World" popped in my head this morning? All I can say is, "Skype made me do it!"
I took this snap shot on skype this morning. That's Grandma Johnson, Mommy Ju Zagoto, and our first grandchild Laura Zagoto Johnson. Our oldest son Kip and Ju now live in Sao Palo Brazil...after they met and were married in our backyard on July 25, 2009. Baby Laura is 25 days old in this picture. Renee is visiting there for three weeks and they all gathered around Kip's laptop this morning to have a look at Grandpa-Champa (me)...I was the bracket winner in our Men's NCCA Johnson Family Bracket named "Zagoto Madness". Not a bad close up of three lovely ladies who are 4,978 miles away. Thanks skype!
Now that is almost AROUND THE WORLD!
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