2009 mileage through the end of May

Ok, I haven't posted in forever. Much has happened. I'll try to catch up. In the meantime, I was working on this tonight, so I figured I'd share. Here are my mileage totals (measured by GPS) for each month for several activities.

	January	February	March	April	May
Cycling	0	70.0	136.0	231.4	252.6
Running	0	27.0	26.6	49.8	60.1
Canoeing	0	3.4	9.4	3.2	4.7
Hiking	4.4	14.3	8.9	3.1	15.1

Training is going well. Running has been really, really good for me...physically and mentally. I like the time on the bike, but running clears my head so much more, and I have less likelihood of negativity resulting from intolerant drivers on the roads. Plus, in general, when you're running and smile or say 'hi' to someone, they respond positively. That's much less common on the bike. Mostly because on the road, you're in you own little bubble of reality and nobody seems to like to be yanked out from behind the veil of anonymity that being in a car gives you (and by extrapolation, all other vehicle types).

My general overall leg strength is much more balanced now that I have a significant running component to my training. My knees hurt less from the bike and running is no longer feeling like I'm killing myself through joint pain every time I go out. I think all the time on the bike has made some muscles too strong for their own good in relation to the other leg and joint connective muscles that aren't being exercised on the bike. That's just my unscientific hypothesis, though... Don't go reporting it as truth just because you read it on some blog.

My May mileage on the bike would have been more, but my bike is disintegrating under me. As my friend, Dave, mentioned, the Shimano engineers did a killer job on value engineering the drivetrain parts. Two months after the 2-year warranty on all of the Shimano parts ran out, the damn thing fell apart. I replaced the cassette early in the month (and the chain). Now, the bottom bracket bearings are failing rapidly. I'm looking to buy tools to tear it apart, so I can overhaul the bottom bracket with the parts from the bike I got hit on (with about 50 miles on it). Like I've mentioned before, I'm not convinced that a 10-speed rear cassette and associated skinny parts are worth it. My mountain bike with 7-speed system (3 front x 7 rear, 21 total gear ratios) rode through rain, snow, and whatnot for 10 years before I got the fancy idea to make it a single speed bike.