Saturday Bike Ride - 36 Miles

In hopes to be ready for my first Century Bike Ride I'm trying to do longer bike rides each week, and this week we decided to venture off the W&OD trail and do the Mount Vernon Trail.  

This was a fantastic decision!  

It took about a little less than an hour to get to the trail head and once we were done unloading, we were off!  

At first the trail super crowded with runners, bikers, and walkers, but after about 2 miles things started to clear up.  Dennis and I immediately fell in love with the scenery.  The W&OD trail is less crowded, but there is no view.  This trail was basically the opposite. The majority of the time there was water to the side of us, and right off the bat across the river we could see the Washington Monument and I believe the top of the capitol. 

Next on the scenic route was the Regan National Airport.  Now granted biking around the airport wasn't super cool, but what was, was biking right across the end of the runway when planes were taking off.  This picture doesn't quite do it justice, but it was super scary standing where we were while the planes were just taking flight.  

At about mile 8, we rode under the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge which was also a neat experience.  Under the bridge was a fishing pier, basketball hoops, a bathroom facility, and a number of fitness groups being held.  So bizarre, but really cool.  The bridge was massive and it almost felt creepy being under it.  I don't think we were able to get it in the picture, but directly above us on the bridge we could see the "Welcome to Virginia" sign.  

The next 5 miles past the bridge, we biked through two really cool / cute towns (unsure of what they were called) but they were places that Dennis and I would love to visit while not on a bike.  The trail was mostly on a paved path but there were a few times we had to ride on the street and there were several wooden bridges we had to cross.  One of which put us over this nice little view:

The the final 4 or so miles was a total hill nightmare.  I was not towing Shane on the way to Mt Vernon, but all I could think of between breaths was, "I'm going to be sorry" on the way back.  There were more twists and turns than I have ever experienced on my road bike, but we made it and needed a solid rest before we headed back. 

Biking 18 miles to Mt Vernon too 1 hour and 40 minutes, averaging about 11 miles per hour.  Definitely not a great time, but with all the passing, stopping, and picture taking, we knew this bike ride was going to be more about distance than speed.  

The ride back (another 18 miles) felt like it went faster, but according to my tracker it took 1 hour and 45 minutes to get back.  

As you can see from the pictures, the weather was absolutely perfect and a great day to take in the sights.  Clearly this was way too much to ask of our son!

May Recap

With Beast Mode still engaged, I wanted to take a quick look back to the month of May.  

Using my awesome new Heart Rate Monitor (Mio LINK) and this very cool app (digifit), I've been able to keep track of all my activities this month.  Counting only May, I've done 18 walks, 6 runs, 6 bike rides, and 10 Crossfit classes (with only 5 complete rest days). And a few of those days I did all 3 in the same day!!

I am not, by any means, saying that this was an EASY schedule to keep up, but I made it a priority and as you can see in the 2nd week of the month I was a complete slacker.  Reason?  My husband was in Atlantic City that week for work, so it just wasn't something I could swing.  LIFE HAPPENS.  

This is a HUGE improvement from April and I hope to improve even more for June. 

Memorial Day 2014 - 40 Mile Bike Ride

Dennis and I had been itching to do a longer bike ride for weeks now and Memorial day was providing us the opportunity.  So once again, we woke up earlier than we would have liked, and prepared for the ride. 

We technically started at the END of the trail, but, our plan was to start in Purcellville and bike to Arlington, a total of 50 miles.  We staged my car down right before Arlington and drove up to Purcellville to start our journey.  

We couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day!  

I started the ride towing Shane, as I know that the 2nd half of the ride would be my most challenging so I prefer to take Shane first.  We switching towing him at about mile 15, which was a little disappointing (less than half) but I was struggling already.  

As you can see from this nifty picture, we biked for 40 miles and took us just under 3.5 hours.   You can also see my heart rate in the small box at the bottom right corner.  

We decided to stop at 40 miles because both of our backs started to hurt and it was way hotter than we anticipated and of course we had to keep the health, comfort, and safety of Shane in mind.  We also had some odd things happen to us on our ride:

1.  Shane lost a shoe. 
2.  The Trailer Got a Flat Tire.
3.  We had to walk our bikes through a Fair that was being held in Vienna.
4.  We had to wait for a parade to be over to cross the street
5.  Finally saw Horses on the trail!!
6.  A pedestrian yelled at me and Dennis and him almost got into a fight.  

Also, worth noting, we saw 2 Crossfits right off the Trail:

Catoctin Crossfit & Crossfit Vienna - SO COOL!


We still have plenty of time to train for our 100 mile bike ride in September, and there was no real reason to keep going just to make it to 50 miles.  I hope everybody had an enjoyable long weekend and got some good quality time outside!! 

Also,if you'd like to sponsor me on my 1st ever 100 Mile Bike ride, please click on this link, DONATE HERE ,to make a contribution.  The money goes towards a great cause, MS Research, and is greatly appreciated!