Road Bike: Broken In

I got out for my first ride on the road bike today. What a ride. I think I'm going to give up all this mountain bike stuff and just start riding roads. Just kidin. It was a good ride but doesn't compare to being out in the woods on a singletrack. Just typing that makes me wish for the wonderful summer mornings and my early rides through wilderness. Anyways back on to todays ride. It was very different being out on a road bike instead of my MTB. It took me a while to get used to the gearing and the shifting. Lots of wrong gear moves but that got better by the end of the ride. I ended up riding out to Branched Oak Lake from my house. Man I wish I could have gotten onto the singletrack there. It's my favorite trail. I was out on the ride for about 2:39 and ended up putting in about 45.5 miles round trip. I figured that would be a good way to get the bike broken in properly.

After reading a post of Jason's talking about electrolyte drinks I decided to kinda test out a few new beverages to see how I liked the combination for some of the endurance events I'm going to do this season. I've been reading about nuun(pronounced "noon") for a while and I like the idea of zero calories so I picked some up and tried it out today and I love the stuff very tasty it should fill the roll well. I also took a bottle of the powerbar endurance drink. I think the combo of the 2 should work pretty well. The endurance drink also has a few calories and I can get the rest from the gels.

All in all a good day of riding especially in Jan. I hope to get out again tomorrow. I don't know for how long or where I will go I'll just have to see how I feel. Here's a few pics from todays ride:

Finishing a small climb up a hill and about to look over pawnee lake where I used to turn around when I rode my mountain bike on the road.

A much different look down than what I'm used to.

Looking out over a frozen Branched Oak Lake

The bike back home after its 45 mile maiden voyage.

Harp