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Thursday, May 23, 2013

Bicyclist in Training

On Wednesday May 22nd, 2013 Maxine and I rode our bikes to her school in the morning, then back home in the evening.  The distance for our route is about 4.5 km (2.8 miles), keeping to bike paths, wide sidewalks, and very occasionally riding on roads when there is no other choice.  It took us a bit over 40 minutes to get there.  Thursday we cut it down to 35 minutes.

Maxine's teacher told me that Maxine was not as active as usual in the morning, but seemed fine in the afternoon.  I'm guessing that if we do this regularly, she will become a monster, with just as much energy as before after taking 20 minutes to ride to school.  Now I have to slow myself down to keep down with her (is that a proper expression?).  She maxes out at about 20 kph (12 mph).

This makes me unbelievably happy.  I want her to enjoy biking like I do, so that we can bike together, and so far we are on target.

But Thursday night Maxine was wiped out.  She is normally somewhat moody, but that night she was just a mess.  In hindsight, we should have aimed to put her in bed by 8 or so, to give her body a chance to recover from all that bike-muscle building, but we didn't.  I had to go teach a class and didn't get home until 9, Horyon came home at her usual time, around 7, so the kids had dinner late and didn't get into bed until after 10.  Horyon was frustrated with Maxine's moodiness, and her own moodiness kicked in, and she handed down a ruling:  No biking to school two days in a row.  Probably a good idea, at least until she builds up some endurance.

I'm a bit sore, after two days in a row.  After dropping Maxine off, I did some riding of my own on both days.  Wednesday I rode Igi-dae, my old warm-up ground.  I consider it a baseline of sorts: if I can make it all the way around the car road without having to stop and push .  I did it.  Minor woop.  So on Thursday when I got up to the walking trail (that is mostly paved, and has some seriously steep slopes), I decided to give it a go.

I had to get off the bike three times to push it up hills that were calling me a sissy boy and stealing my lunch money.

So now I've got two goals to work towards:

1)  I will get back my hill-climbing biking body, legs, lungs and head.
2)  I will get Maxine on her bike as much as she can take, and give her the life-long love of it that I had forgotten for so long.

And my other goal, of putting random pictures with every blog post, is coming along nicely, thank you.

Maxine and her posse be workin' the wild strawberries, yo.

Horyon takes the best pictures of the kids.
They just look extra cute for her.

Maxine is quick to lead the way up the trees.

And Quinten is following in Maxine's footsteps
as far as climbing goes.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The pic of the kids in the tree reminds me of one of you and Chris in a tree, probably not much older than that. I always loved that picture.
Aunt Becky

Rob Sack said...

One year we did a Christmas card with Chris and I in the tree in our back yard. I'm guessing that's the one you're thinking of.

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