Tuesday I rode with my group to the Southeast of Morgan Hill. I had really bad luck with flats. I fixed a rear flat but could not find the reason. Then the replacement tube went flat after a couple of miles. This is on a Schwalbe marathon plus tire, which has almost 12 mm of a flat protection belt. After scrutinizing the tire I finally found and removed a staple over 15 mm long that had worked through the belt. Fortunately I had a second spare tube and was ok after that. It was good to have friends around to keep me company but a bit embarrassing to be holding up the group.
Wednesday I did my upper-body strength workout early in the morning. After that I went with my friend Ted, a retired police officer, to a shooting range to try my hand with pistols. I had only shot a pistol a few times in my life, 54 years ago when I joined a club at West Point that used 22 caliber target pistols. I was pretty bad at it so gave up after a couple of weeks. This time I tried out Ted’s 45 caliber and 9 mm automatics and 38 cal revolver. With his coaching I did much better than in the past but was scattering the shots rather than getting tight groupings. Ted said this was caused by anticipating the shot and flinching a bit. He said to squeeze slowly and let the shot surprise me. That helped somewhat. It reminds me of Eugen Herrigel’s discussion about releasing the arrow in Zen And The Art of Archery. Overall, this was really tiring! It’s a bad idea to do it on the same day you do an upper body workout.
The next day I did a long hard ride with some intervals. Then yesterday I did a long easy ride to the Northeast of Morgan Hill which was really enjoyable and relaxing, averaging about 20 mph with my assist. I noticed with a tailwind I could exceed 20 mph which makes the assist kick off, a good way to conserve the battery.
Tuesday’s ride is posted on Strava here, Thursday’s here, Yesterday’s here.
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