Get Fit (Again) February - Week One

 After a particularly sedentary and dpressing last few months, I've decided it's time to GET OUT RIDING again! Or walking!? Or whatever!? I just need to get out and get some fresh air and exercise. 

On the first I went out for a walk/run with Keira, because she'd decided she wanted to take up running and I thought maybe I'd try it out with her. It was really nice and warm out. I discovered that running really isn't my thing. We went about 2Km walking a block then running a block. I made it about 1.5Km and had to give up the running as I was worried I might utterly destroy my knees!? 

Tuesday, I did nearly a 20Km loop of the Circle and Gordie Howe Bridges. 

Wednesday I walked to Broadway with Keira and picked up groceries.  (The picture is on our walk home) 

Thursday I went for another ride. 

Again a loop including the Circle Drive and Gordie Howe bridges... but with a side-trip to Dragon's Den Games. 

It was getting a bit chillier through the week. 

bit of frost on the face..

Friday I just rode downtown with Keira for our weekly Library Run. It was cold. Like, -28°C with a -33 windchill. 

Saturday it was colder still! 

but I was determined to get out for another ride! EVERY DAY was the plan!!!

It was a shorter ride - well, shorter than the bridge loops earlier in teh week. Longer than the library run. I tried to keep to the singletrack by the river - to keep out of the wind. 

Cold ducks. 

So much fog on the river! 

More fog on the river. 

MOAR Frosty Face! 

Sunday... well...

waking up to -51 windchill, I decided I'd wait and see how it warmed up in the afternoon. It didn't much. I don't think the windchill got above -45... 

I decided to call it a "Rest Day"... 

It was disappointing to have to not get out for a day in the FIRST WEEK... 

But I still did more activity this week than any other week in the last few months... so...

It's a START at least! 

Unfortunately the forecast is saying more of the same for the rest of the week!? 

What a terrible month to try and start getting the physical activity up again!? 

January 2021

 January wasn't SUPER cold... maybe there was one week at the end....? Not like the first week of February (when I'm writing this). In fact, I seem to recall the first bit was REALLY warm. 

So warm I was riding in shorts and even had to take mittens off I was getting so warm! 

Section of road that has been closed and will, at some point, be converted to multi use trail. Unfortunately, being closed, they are no longer clearing snow off of it. The path next to it was clear - but a number of days there were just SO MANY people out, I kind of tried to avoid riding there. 

People were out wandering around - often in large groups (becuase the current Public Health Order said no one was to go to another's house... but you could meet up outside... so large groups wandering around the trails together... not bothering to get out of the way... 

This path... in the entire 3-4Km section I might encounter four or five people along the entire length of it in the summer... but here it was a constant flow of people in either direction. 

I kind of gave up on riding around the trails for a bit - just too many people... large groups... not giving proper space to pass... 

Heading to Broadway for groceries with Amanda one day. 

She forgot her keys at home... and I had to ride all the way home and get the and come back so she could unlock her bike (it doesn't require the keys to lock it - one end just pops into the other). 

Library run with Keira. 

MOST people seem to have figured out how parking around the separated bike lane works... but then every once in a while there's someone who just doesn't get it ... and then someone else comes along and tries to join them...!? (black car is parked in the bike lane, Red one is trying to parallel park behind it, also in the bike lane, between teh black cars AND THE POST THE DENOTES THAT THERE IS A BIKE LANE THERE!? SERIOUSLY!?) 

Another Library run... 

Last library run of the month. AT the end of the month the temperature did drop for a bit - hence the fog on the river. 

Teh fog coming off the river did make all the trees along the river pretty with all teh frost.... 

Yeah, come to think of it... I think the only time I left the house in January was to get groceries... pick up books at the library... and a couple of Physiotherapy appointments... 

The other nice thing about the deep cold is there are FAR fewer people out on the trails!

Occasional person out walking their dog - sharply contrasting with the otherwise black and white environment! 

Fog. 

So much fog... 

Well enough of this not getting out! I decided February should be Get Fit (Again) February! I'm going to get out and run or walk or ride EVERY day throughout February! 

Looking Back, Looking Ahead

 We made it! Happy New Year!

Sunrise, 1 January 2021

Looking at my cycling stats on Strava... not terrible... better than nothing, I guess. There were a lot of rides over the last month or so that didn't get logged - computer just wasn't working... Not THAT many, but a large percentage of them. 

Comparing to the previous year though... 

Wow... What happened...!? 2020 Happened. With all of our regularly scheduled activities cancelled you'd think I'd have gotten more riding in... But that somehow that just wasn't the case. PART of it was the hand and knee injuries that kept me mostly off the bike the last two and a half months. A LITTLE BIT of it was the aforementioned computer issues. PART of it was not having any place to go. 

But those were only parts. Small parts. I don't do that much riding in November and December. The commuting is a relatively smaller part of the overall distance I do in the year, so not having a place to go was less of a factor than the overall malaise of the year and not wanting to even leave the house. 

I mean, look at this... 

This is 2019 - a pretty regular year not so much riding the first few months, generally building up to longer rides in the spring and lots of rides in the summer always a bit of a shift and correction in the first week of September as I adjust to a new schedule and then start working in some longer fun/exercise rides around all the getting-kids-to-places rides... 

And then there was 2020... 

WAY more riding in March-April-May... because there was nothing much else to do... but as the year wore on, motivation got more variable. Mercurial, even. And then the knee issue (which is doing much better now! The finger still isn't great - the fracture is more-or-less healed - but 8 weeks in a splint was probably a bit too long and the physiotherapy is taking some time...).

Well... that's over with, I guess. 

Hopefully this new year will be better. 

December

Once again, less riding this month... Knee still recovering from strain. Cold. Snow. Nowhere to even go. It's been a pretty crap end to an utterly crap year. I don't want to tempt the fates by making a statement like; Next year HAS to be better... because... you know... I'm sure it COULD be worse... But I am trying to stay positive and hope for a better new year... or at least a year that a bit less of a global dumpster fire! 

Riding somewhere with Amanda. I probably should have wrote some commentary earlier in the month when I actually TOOK the photos... 

Pretty sunset. Pretty lady. 

More sunset

Sun rise. 

Fog on the river.

The day before this, it was -2°C

The day after it went up to 0°C

But this Friday, when I had a physio appointment and then had to go back downtown with Keira for a Library run it was  -20°C (with -30 windchill)!? 

Yeah, that's actually me. 

I made two trips out on Monday the 28th - on the way home from the first trip, I saw a duck on the river that I couldn't identify, but before I could get my camera out it dove under the water. On my way out to an appointment later, I saw the same duck under the same bridge an rummaged through my pocket for my camera. While I was doing so, a second one popped up from under the water, then a third! I still have no idea what kind of bird they are.... 

The city has been doing a pretty good job of clearing the snow from the Victoria Avenue separated bike lane.... except for here... apparently they decided it was cool for the adjacent apartment to use the bike lane as storage space for snow removed from their "parking lot"...?   

Had to pick up another tub of drywall mud - the closest place I discovered was closed until the 4th and thus had to travel a little further afield. The Co-op Home Centre (10Km round trip) was the next closest place. That's a 18Kg tub of mud. It was a little off-balancing. Which made riding on snow and ice... interesting... 

A couch. In the River. ON New Year's Eve. At first I thought someone just carried it down and chucked in in there... but there were no foot prints, and it would have been a long way to carry it from any building or from the nearest point a car or truck could park... someone must have dumped it in the river upstream and it actually floated down and washed up on the shore. 

Alleyways. Less cars. Usually less ice.

Well... that's it.

Hopefully next year is better and we all get out for more rides. 

Oh NO! Vember Continues

With snow and an injured knee and not much else going on... I barely left the house the last few weeks. I did get out for a few rides. Mostly quick Library Runs downtown, groceries and a trip downtown for another x-ray of my finger (STILL BROKEN!?). 

It's actually been quite warm this last week - the forcast is calling for temperatures above zero, which somepeople will probably love... but oh, man, the streets are just going to be awful when all this snow starts melting during the day, then freezing up again overnight... 

Heading out for a library run. 

In the week since we last went out they'd done a much better job of clearing away snow on the trails - and especially downtown. 

Most people seem to have figured out the bike lanes... the rest... at this point...? Well, I'm just not sure if they're complete, utter morons or willfully ignorant, psychotic, bike-hating cusses...? 

Heading home from picking up some groceries on Broadway. 

Amanda and her Moonlander.