This could be the classic case of counting my chickens before they hatch. There’s still a lot of time left in the day, but by the end of it all I should be passing the 600-mile mark in a month for the second time (the first being just last month, when I did 601.58 miles). I’ll even pass last month’s total mileage if I take a little longer route home (I’m talking maybe by only a quarter mile or so).
June has been a good month. I did 10 BCFBs in June, each averaging 20.3 miles. I topped 70 miles on each of my four weekend rides (averaging nearly 74 miles and finishing with an 80-miler). It’s also been my biggest month ever for climbing, topping 23,000 feet for the first time (topping 22,000 feet for the first time for that matter). I made a couple of rides I’d been wanting to do too. I took the hill on 34 from Ibjang to Jinch’eon and back over from I’wol to Anseong. And just a few days ago I did the Namhansanseong climb. A whole lot of discovery there. A whole lot of thinking too. I spent over 44 hours riding my bike in June.
I learned something too, now that it’s getting warmer (I’ve written about this recently) and I still can’t figure out why I wasn’t doing this all along — early-morning starts are the key to those longer weekend rides. I have to be in the barn by noon or the sun’ll just sap me of the energy I need to get home when I’m way out there. There’s really nothing worse — well, there’s one thing worse, but I won’t get into it here — than being 20 miles from home at 2 in the afternoon and the temperatures climbing through the mid-80s. The sun and the humidity just kill me.
And to cap the month off, I (laughingly so) got a KOM (King of the Mountain) on a “climb” this morning. This only happens when nobody else rides a particular segment. At least nobody that rides without training wheels.
June was also the month in which I hit the 30-pounds-lost mark. I started that back in February at 192 and have been sitting around 162 for a few days now. I’m enjoying that thoroughly too. More energy. Better sleep. Better digestion. Fewer headaches. More climbing on the bike with fewer complaints (I’m still as slow as molasses in January, but not intimidated by the hills at all).
And it’s summer now, and maybe you know what that means…
