Yesterday, I was going to do the Sligo Creek to Capital Crescent Trail into work, and then do it again coming home.

Cledus was my weapon of choice, he’s a solid warhorse of a bike that loves the road and frolics on gravel. I felt good, the weather was beautiful, and once I got warm I started pushing on him, and then kept pushing harder. I hit pedestrian-free stretches on the gravel parts of the CCT where cruising in the 20’s was as easy and natural as the grin on my face, and towards the end I even took turns pulling and drafting another gentleman that was tearing down the last couple miles towards Water St. I realize this is not at all impressive by any objective measure, but averaging 16.5 mph for 20.6 miles is probably the performance highlight of my short, unremarkable cycling career.

When it was time to go home at the end of the day, I was pumped to get on the loop for another run… right up until I got on the bike. Half block into the ride home, I realized I had nothing left in the tank, nada, so I headed north to the shortest, flattest route home and tried to keep the stiffness and fire in my legs down to a manageable level. Progress burns!

Nevertheless, with that short ride home, and then a round trip to the pool to meet the family, the first half of the year came to a close with my first ever 500 mile month! Woohoo! Here’s some more numbers, as recorded by… BikeGame!:

• Finished June with 502 1/4 miles and somewhere around 14405 feet of climbing, though MapMyRide’s elevation stats are innaccurate, so that’s kind of an arbitrary measure suggesting only that some climbing was done. We’ll call those units “not-feet”.
• For the year, I’ve done 271 rides for 1962 miles and 59416 not-feet of climbing.
• Also, thanks to a few close friends and family, I’ve raised another $200 in donations for the Livestrong Foundation, and have now crossed the minimum fundraising line of $250 to clock in at $274.65

Now, I need to talk to y’all about something. The Team Fatty Philly manager has asked me about my donations, and I said, “I have just over $250, see? I made it!”

And she said, “$250 is the minimum, sure, but it’s up to you whether or not you want to do the bare minimum. Well, like, Oscar over there has raised $2740, and he has a terrific smile.”

So I said to her, “Okay. Okay, so you want me to do more fundraising.”

“Chiggins,” she says, “people can go anywhere to give money to fight cancer. They give to people doing the Livestrong Challenge for the thrill and the attitude. That’s what it’s about, okay? It’s about fun.”

“So you want me to raise more funds then?”

“Look, we want you to fundraise, okay? If you think the bare minimum’s enough, then okay. But some people raise more, and we encourage that, okay? You do want to raise more funds, don’t you?”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

“Great. Great. That’s all Team Fatty asks”

“Okay.”

So, um, I need to raise some more flair– er, funds, I don’t wanna be on the wrong side of Philly Jen. If you were thinking about making a donation, now’d be a good time to do it.

There’s 54 days left until the Philly ride, and we’re only five riders away from our goal for team members. Last I checked, I was the only representative from our nation’s capital. You really, really don’t want me to be the sole representative from our nation’s capital. So I’m calling out all you cyclists from the District, and asking you to join me in Philadelphia on August 23rd.

Also, our team’s about 30% of the way to our fundraising goal, so please consider making a contribution. With your help, we’ll hit our goal. Hopefully, we’ll surpass it, by a lot.

I mean, c’mon, what do you think of someone that just does the bare minimum?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 at 5:30 am and is filed under Bikegame, Cycling, Livin' Strong. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.