Biggest Day Ever Anniversary

One year ago today I rode my biggest one day total 194.73 kms. Mostly in the rain and against a headwind. I slept well that night.

On Monday I discovered the new bike commute is about 1:40 minutes and closing in on 40 kilometers. Bear in mind when you look at that time the traffic lights when on the roads and the crazy heavy pedestrian traffic on the bike paths around Ottawa. You can't really go fast or build up a decent rhythm when commuting in this town. I figure that's too much time to do it every day but I am going to try to do it a couple of times a week. Maybe Bike in, bus home, bus in, bike home.

Yesterday I went for a run. My first run in too long. 45 minutes, not sure how many kilometers but my quads are not my friends today. I'm still at a level of fitness where I burn out my legs but my cardio is fine. It's funny that I'm undisguisably fat and I've got none of the strength I had and yet despite months of not using it I still have decent cardio. Good cardio seems to be a lasting effect of the 11,000+ kilometers I rode in 2008.

Just for badness I did the run in my new Five Fingers Sprint shoes, also known as "gloves for your feet". For those who do not know what "gloves for your feet" are here is a picture:



It's like walking around barefoot minus the cutting, burning, puncturing and fungal sensations. And, so far at least, I haven't been refused service in a restaurant while wearing them. To date I've mostly run on the treadmill in the Five Fingers but there were good for running out doors too. Even the short stretches of concrete. Most of my run yesterday was on grass where the shoes give surprisingly good traction.

Seeds of Dissent

The seed of the AT trip is Bill Bryson’s humorous travelogue A Walk in the Woods so I decided that in all fairness I should read a travelogue of the Camino de Santiago before making any firm decision about which to do. I checked out a local bookstore and quickly narrowed my search down to two choices – a humorous book written by a German guy and a Canadian book written by a guy who has hiked the Camino de Santiago 5 times.

In the end I chose the Canadian book (buy local!) because it was published more recently (2007). The book title is All the Good Pilgrims, it is written by Robert Ward – his first book. I’ll let you know how it reads. The reviews on the back cover are positive…

Freight

I looked into booking passage on a freighter. There are travel agencies that will do it and some shipping companies take direct bookings. On the interweb it says $50-$75 per day. I found a company that takes passengers and does a fairly regular grain shipment of Montreal to Barcelona that takes about 10 days. That's $500-$750. Cheaper than flying but not exactly hoboing it. I did see some scant mention of working for passage on some shipping lines which would be even cooler.

As for training for a long hike - I've done nothing for far too long. The result being that I'm in pretty poor condition. As is if I tried to book passage on a freighter they might want to charge me as freight by kilo rather than human passage... So I'm going to have to make some kind of fitness plan for once the move is completed. That's in one more week and I'm looking forward to it. As an aside - if you are a single person and your main hobbies aren't watching TV and shopping, my advice is don't buy a house. A condo maybe.

As for a new exercise regime the relocation to Kanata will have a huge impact on what I do. I'll be living with the running man and family ans they are a pretty health conscious crew so I'll have the moral support. I'm thinking there will be some trail running at Kanata Lakes, some work with the weights and more yoga. Anyone have any recommendations for a good Ottawa west end yoga studio?