Hey everyone, it's due time to make another cycling post about the recent trips I made and also to help and make this cycling community somewhat more active other than the Strava2Hive automated posts, which is by the way a great service and if you haven't heard of it - once set up it auto posts your Strava training in to the cycling community.

My hive friend @friendlymoose is an experienced rider who is giving me helpful advice, and so I learned about the site WindFinder to easily see what the wind direction is, which is pretty important for cyclists because you don't want to have the wind working against you on the second half when you're already a little tired, going back home... In fact, I haven't done anything with wind directions for about 30 years since I was a boy scout! 😄

The color in the map displays the wind speed and the particles are moving from where the wind is blowing from, so the site is easily displaying everything you want to know without even having to think about where the wind is coming from when you see South - South - West, for example.

Improvements

It's already been two weeks since my last cycling post, and because I'm still a beginner (I think this is week 8 for me) I'm still improving almost weekly in strength and endurance and discovering new roads and villages in my own neighborhood because I can now cover a little bit more distance, I remember on my first trip when I bought my bike, I got a little bit lost (this turned out to be something that happens to me a lot 😆) and so my first trip was 18 kilometers which I paid the price for with back pain, worse enough I needed to skip my next training day, eight weeks later and I can already do over 40 kilometers on a higher average speed!

Keeping an eye on injuries

Since I'm not the youngest, nearing my half 40's and the fact I have hyper-mobile joints which was the reason I had to stop running my fear was cycling would give me new injuries to worry about, my lower back has occasionally been a problem for the last 20 years but it turns out cycling is great to train your core muscles supporting the back, I was thinking it was only the lower half of the body that was being trained while cycling, but two days later since my last ride I can still feel my abdominal muscles. 😄

In my second week a new problem developed, knee pain 😕 the first week it was the lower front of my knee (patella) that started to hurt after my training and later the area above my new, so - new worries I maybe need to stop or lower the intensity of my newly found hobby.

I refused to accept this, this early on so I searched how I could fix this and the solution was pretty easy - the pain my back was sometimes giving me was being fixed by training the core muscles supporting my back, and the solution for my knee could be found in the same way, so I found exercises I now do daily to train the muscles around my knee and now after 6 weeks, my last training was without pain, yay!

Fun fact: because most people are right handed, the subconscious brain favors the right half of your body and makes sure the right side is not hurt at the expense of the left side, and therefore 90% of knee problems cyclist experience are in the left knee.

This is something I learned from YouTube so it could be nonsense, but for me this was true, my left knee was giving me problems!

Strava stats

On my first week of cycling, I didn't have Strava yet so my first activity was on May 25th, since then I already did over 400 kilometers, experienced road bikers won't think this is a lot but I think it's great. When you would have told me a year ago I would go 20+ kilometers for fun and exercise I wouldn't have believed you... the only reason why I would go more than my usual rides on my regular city bike to the store or barber was go on a trip to spend time with my daughter, most of those trips were around 15 kilometers at a relaxing pace, enjoying the scenery and each others company.

Height variations are something that almost don't exist in my country which is 99% flat so the best climbs I do are up ramps to dykes and bridges, the road conditions in The Netherlands are great though with a lot of smooth asphalt and separate cycling paths for more safety.

Strava tried to lure me with a month free premium subscription to see all cool nerdy stats, but one of the changes is the app displays your CURRENT speed where the free version displays your AVERAGE speed, no option to toggle between those (why not!?)

Because I like to see my average speed I like the free version better, sorry, no money from me Strava!

Rambling, sharing my trips

Wow, I tend to ramble about the things I love in my Splinterlands posts... but it happens to me on cycling posts as well 😅

The trip I planned on Google Maps was this:

But in reality this was my route, the first part was as planned until I arrived in the city called Vianen, mostly unknown to me, and I know I can use apps to fully guide me and load routes in to google maps as well, but I don't mind doing some exploring, it's adventure!

After a couple of more months, I will be an expert on all the small roads I can take in the cities and villages around my home town, but then probably I am able to cover more distance so I will be discovering new cities and villages and get lost all over again. 😄

When crossing another highway and turning left on the dyke following the river called 'De Lek' and recovering somewhat because of the steep climb this was the view to my right, the weather wasn't great but it's still very pretty.

Like most dykes, the asphalt is great to cycle on and I always wondered what the structure in the water was I could see in the distance while driving my car on the highway bridge crossing the river, so today I wanted to find out, it's a ship lock!

It's there in the distance on the picture below, but hard to see... when I got closer the trees and overgrowth was in my way to get a good picture myself.

Picture source.

Funny to be on the other side, because that's the bridge I take multiple times a week while driving my van for work.

When I got past the bridge I entered Vianen and I thought I was going in to the right direction, well it couldn't go really wrong because on one side there was the river.... after a couple of kilometers I decided to stop and check Google Maps to see where I was going because it was already a good distance and I didn't want to over stretch myself, I was not where I was planning to go but I could see I was still on a somewhat right way to get to the next village called Lexmond, and of course only after 100 meters after stopping to check my phone, there was a sign telling me where to go. 🙃

Crossing another nice smooth cycling path and meeting a girl on her road bike I greeted (most road bikers don't greet me, is there a grudge between MTB's and RB's I don't know of?) and after turning right I had a moment of realization where I was, the week before I was riding on the other side of the same canal!

about 5 kilometers away from home, a small group of road bikers were nearing the same crossing I was heading for from my left, a little ahead of me but they didn't see me... we both turned the same way and so I could sneak up behind and follow them on the same speed at around 31 km/h but at the next crossing they turned right, where I needed to go straight ahead and that was the moment they realized there was someone close to them who wasn't a part of their group, hi! 😄

The total distance with 43.3 kilometers was only 0.3 kilometers short of my biggest distance so far, so the 50 kilometers is the next distance to break.

One more ride!

Wow this post is way longer than I planned it to be, and maybe too long? Let me know if it's too long, I'll understand when you stop reading at this point lol.

The last trip I took was last Thursday and I planned to discover an area I never had been to before, north of the highway a27 to the village of Ameide, I could see on the map there was a new dyke waiting for me there, I love dykes because of the smooth surface and the pretty views on the water and surrounding area.

This time I did prepare a small piece of paper telling me where to go on certain moments and I think this was the first time my planned and actual route where mostly the same.

This is just outside my own town, two minutes away from where I live, a great path to take with a great view of the surrounding fields and animals

And once I left the cycling path, there are bigger farms in the fields, most countries have miles and miles of nothing, we don't have that in my country.

I've been to the village called Lexmond a couple of times already but I only got to it and then went West and I never passed trough it, it's where I once had my motor cycle lessons so I recognized the village center, and as soon as I got out of Lexmond on the other side I found the dyke, good!

This is very pretty I think, I scared a lot of pigeons I didn't see that were in the grass, when I got closer they all flew away, too fast for me to take my camera out.

I will definitely visit this dyke again!

When I passed the village called Ameide, I needed to look more closely where I needed to go to and check road names on my piece of paper, making a mistake here would lead me to 50+ kilometers easily.

This is the first time I was able to keep my average speed above 27 km/h probably because of the low wind speed at around 6 km/h but then again, half of the time the wind is helping me and the other half it's working against me, so I'm not sure if this really was the reason.
It was also the first time my power output has been above 100 watts, as far as that counts for something because Strava calculates this without knowing road conditions or wind speed...

The Strava app told me almost the entire ride I was training anaerobic, I knew the different names aerobic / anaerobic but I didn't knew what it meant so I was researching it, and then the very same day, @friendlymoose covered this topic in his cycling post!

Well, that's it for today's cycling post, enjoy your weekend everyone!