Joel Hainley : San Francisco Bay Area Software Consultant

I haven’t been doing enough bicycle riding for the last six months. Because of this, riding my fixed gear as my “daily driver” was becoming more and more difficult. So I decided to change my main cog until I get back into shape. While I was ordering parts I also put a freewheel cog on the other side of the fixed hub. Just in case there’s times that being able to coast would be useful.

After I put on the new cog I got a call to meet Frank for beers over at the golf course. I had a couple of other errands I had to run and thought it’d be a good test ride. After the beers, it was dark as I headed across town and picked up some materials I needed at home depot.  The Iron Horse trail runs right past the home depot, and there’s an access point very close to there. The only problem with the access point is that there’s not a lot of light at night to see what’s going on.

When I rode onto the trail through this access point I wasn’t able to see very well. So I was a little startled when I heard something running and realized I had scared a cat as it was running along the trail. Unfortunately, there is a fence along the other side of the trail with no way for a cat to get out.  So as I approached the cat it stopped running and turned around to start running back towards me. The cat then realized it was getting closer to me and turned towards the fence to try and get away.

It was at this moment that I realized that the kitty had two white stripes running down its black back and a very bushy tail. It was also apparent that as I was rolling towards him that Pepe was assuming a fully-defensive posture and charging the main guns. I realized in that moment two things, stopping would put me directly next him, and the only thing that I could do was speed up get as far towards the other side of the trail as poosible and hope.

Thankfully, that ended up being enough. I heard the spray hitting the fence leaves behind me as I swept past and spent the next few minutes laughing about the whole thing and thinking about how interesting it would have been to actually get sprayed. Not because that sounds like fun, but I was actually on my way to the BART station to catch a ride back over the hill towards home. It would have been hysterical to see how fast everyone in a BART car would leave if I walked on “freshly annointed”.

I’ve finally settled down on a challenge for bicycling for the next 15 months. I’m going to be spending the next two months building up my base and getting my speed and strength built back up. Not commuting anymore, it’s been hard to easily maintain my fitness level. You read it all the time in the bicycling books and magazines but I’ll say it again, commuting is a low pain way to keep yourself in great shape. When I was riding my bike back and forth to work every day I would get a minimum of a 16 mile day, and I rarely took days off, so I kept up a good base mileage even in the worst weather that Northern California could muster.

In April, once I have my base established and have regained some speed and strength, I’ll do my first century. I’ve assembled a tentative schedule for the next 13 months after that. I’m going to be riding a century a month and working on building up my strength, speed, etc. Most of the centuries through the spring, summer fall, will most likely be supported centuries, but into the winter the century schedule gets very thin and there aren’t a lot of supported centuries so some of these will probably need to be self-supported rides. This isn’t really a big deal though, during training for my first century a few years ago, I was regularly riding 85-90 miles on a Sunday long ride.

Please note : I’m not saying that I’m going to ride a total of 12 centuries so that they average out to 12 months, but I’m going to be riding 1 century each calendar month ( or as close to it as i can be there is one century that I was considering counting for  July of this year, that actually happens on the last weekend in June, but that might change. )  The idea here is that riding 12 centuries during century season isn’t that difficult given that you can get the time to take off every weekend for a couple of months to get it done, but that riding a century each month will keep me in shape year round without having to get crazy in the early part of the year with “building up my base” again.

So that’s it, now you have something to hold me to.  One century a month - 12 centuries for the 12 months between april 2008 and april 2009. I’ll be posting weekly mileage/training reports, and monthly recaps and hopefully chronicling my experience during this endeavor. Rock on!

(btw : My goals for 2009 aren’t complete yet, but all of this century riding through 2008 and into 2009 is working towards a goal of riding a double century sometime during 2009. )

I’m back on the bike in a more serious mindset than I had last year. I only ended up riding a single century last year, Death Valley Spring, it was a good ride. However, once that was over I got more busy with other things and dealing with some health issues within my immediate family and I just never made the time. This year I’m back on the bike, progressing through training and hoping to do my first century in March. I think i’ll be ready if the weather cooperates and allows me to get out for a long ride once a week. I’m riding 4 times a week for an average of 20 miles per ride. I ride 1 day on the fixed gear, and the other days on a multispeed bike.

I haven’t ridden serious in months and was amazingly out of shape. I started riding again on January 20th so the numbers for January are small, things have been picking up the first part of February and if things continue I should be in pretty good shape. We’ll see.

Total Mileage in January : 152.59 miles

Multigear Mileage : 140.59

Fixed Gear ( track bike ) Mileage : 12

Looks a little grim when I look at what I was doing weekly when I did the Foxy’s Fall classic a couple of years ago. Gotta get back into that kind of shape.