Mark's Blog

I have had my Goldrush for 11 months and had two "firsts" today, one positive and one negative, on my last ride of Spring. The positive one was having a rolling average of over 15 MPH (15.4 MPH to be exact) on a 50+ mile ride (50.87 mi today) for the first time on the Goldrush. I had done that before on an upright bike but that was a long time ago.

The negative "first" was killing my first animal with the Goldrush. I was 15 miles into the ride on a smooth, flat section of a rural road. This is Indiana, so there is field of 8-inch high corn on the left side of the road and a field of 6-inch high soybeans on the right side of the road. There is a slight tailwind and I am making 21 -22 MPH with only a moderate effort and trying to decide if I should work a little harder for more speed or save energy for the second half of the ride. Suddenly, about four seconds travel time in front of me, a groundhog run two feet into the road from the left and stops, eyeing me intently. I can quickly imagine several ways that this can end badly and in all of them I am laying on the road in various degrees of pain. Figuring that running over a groundhog will make for dicey handling, I found myself naturally falling into my "car on ice" procedure -- take my foot off the gas (stop pedaling,) do not touch the brakes, grip the steering wheel (handlebars) firmly and steer dead straight ahead. I figure this will give me the best chance of keeping the bike upright and give the groundhog the best chance of avoiding me. When I am about 30 feet away from him and going around 18-19 MPH, the groundhog decides to complete his trip across the road directly in front of me. As he scurries across the road, making himself as flat as possible, I run directly over the middle of his back. To my surprise and relief, the Goldrush tracked straight ahead over the animal with no loss of control. I checked in the mirror as I coasted on and the groundhog laid in the road without moving. I passed the spot on the return half of the trip about 75 minutes later and the groundhog was indeed dead, still in the same spot on the road.

Whew! It's a shame the groundhog decided to go for it. Running over an animal must give you a bit of a sickening feeling. But it's a relief that it didn't take you down with it. Do you take cycling seriously enough to shave your legs just in case?

Averaging 15.4 mph (24.8 kph) is pretty good for that long. According to this website, you'd've been burning almost 0.06 calories/lb/minute. So if you and the fully loaded bicycle weigh 210 lbs. for example, you'd've burned about 2500 calories, which is enough to exhaust your glycogen stores, depending on how hard riding at that speed is for you.

Did you feel you were hitting the wall by the end of the ride?