It's the Little Things...

So it was another fairly successful day. I set a couple new personal bests; I finally rode the whole North Branch Trail which, in turn, set my new furthest distance record. And I did the whole ride at a new best average speed (for a "long distance" ride). Still slow compared to the old pro's, but better for me none-the-less.

It was so foggy and damp when I got onto the path today that within a couple of miles water was dripping from the brake handles on the bike and off the visor of my helmet. I was soaked! The bike ended up completely loaded with silt and leaves, as did the fronts of my legs. My fingers were pretty cold at the start of the ride and my toes began to get a bit cold too, but before long the sun began to burn through and all was good. It was a glorious morning for a ride.

To all the other riders out this morning who asked if I was OK when I did another one of my famous clippless tumbles while trying to cross Harp road, thank you for asking. And thank you for not laughing until I was out of site.

I was running a new seat and shorter handle bar stem today and the combination felt darn good. At the end of the ride, the sit bones in my butt were sore, but my other nether regions felt just fine. I'm satisfied with that. I can work on toughening up my sit bones, but there just wasn't much I was going to be able to do to help the ol' twig and berries. The new seat is an S1 from Neuvation Cycling and seems to be a pretty nice piece for the money and so far it is certainly more comfortable than the Fuji seat that came on the bike. Natural leather seat, Kevlar sides, Carbon-nylon bottom and Titanium rails for 59 bucks is hard to beat. So far, after one good ride, I give this seat a thumbs up. We'll see if my sit bones begin to feel better with some more time on the saddle.

One point of interest. After only about 10 miles today, my left hip started screaming at me on any sort of incline. I noticed that if I stopped pedaling with that foot down and lifted myself off the seat just slightly, the pain immediately went away and left me feeling oh-so-wonderful. It occured to me that this new seat was slightly shorter (from the rails to the top of the seat) than the previous seat. So I stopped and raised the seat post about 1 cm and the hip pain completely went away. Once again proving that fine tuning of a bike is key to making the long rides easier, and it is important to carry some tools.

• 37.01 miles
• 2'33"
• 14.6 mph avg.
• 24.3 mph max.