Big Rides, with Children - by Amy

The bridge was nice. The ramp up, not so much.

Over the last few weeks, Jamie and I have been trying to do several short rides during the week and longer rides on weekends. The lesson learned was that our biggest challenges aren't our physical limitations -- they are the cute little people on the ride with us!

First, we did the BWI loop -- I believe Jamie may have mentioned that ride in his last post. It was a total of 14 miles, which we did in 2 hours. If you think that is slow, then you have never pulled a 40-lb toddler in a trailer up a ramp to an overpass bridge!

On our earlier, shorter rides, Ray had nothing but love for the bike choo-choo. Ray loves watching airplanes so the BWI ride had additional entertainment value for him. We were cautiously optimistic that he would behave for two hours.

Jamie and Ray and the runway

Somewhere around the point that we started to feel good about being in the home stretch, Ray decided that sitting in the choo-choo was stupid and began kicking the front cover off (yes, we buckle him in, but the cover is only attached with velcro, and as I may have mentioned, Ray is big). Next he started to complain. Then he started screaming.

Fortunately, we had brought Ray's LeapPad in case of emergency. We finished the trail with the sounds of Team Umizoomi blaring from the choo-choo. I was concerned that the other bikers, runners, and picknickers might not want to hear Team Umizoomi, but I convinced myself that it was better than a screaming two-year-old, and besides, anyone looking for a tranquil run wouldn't choose a path by an airplane runway, right?

Despite Ray's meltdown, it was a good ride experience. There were some serious hills, but Jamie and I both felt physically like we could have kept going. The path offers a lot to look at, crossing highways, circling the airport, and rolling through some pretty farms. We'll go back to that one.

For our second big ride, we had all five Britts in tow and decided to stick to the Baltimore-Washington trail so that no driving was required. Ray behaved this time as long as we kept him stocked with goldfish. Our challenge this time was managing a somewhat grouchy 12-year-old girl who did not understand why she should be forced to spend a 72-degree afternoon outside on a bike. Jarod was extraordinarily eager and excited about the ride, which made Natalie more surly, which made Jarod more eager, ad infinitum.

We did 11.3 miles together, then we were in a good place to drop off Natalie at the house. The remaining four Britts did an additional 6.84 miles, for a total of 18 miles in just under two hours.

At this point, we are estimating a day of child-free Climate Ride biking will take between six and eight hours. Not terrible! Every time we go out, we continue to be more encouraged about the possibility that we can really do this thing!

Couch to Climate Ride - by Jamie

Some of you may be wondering: how the heck do you plan to be in shape for a 300-mile bike ride? The short but uninformative answer is: do a bunch of cycling between now and the ride. The more detailed answer is the subject of this post.

So, is it possible to go from being a couch potato to cycling 300 miles in 5 days in a few short months? Initially I feared that the answer was "no." But as I read the training tips on climateride.org, I started to believe that the answer might actually be "yes." At this point, I sure hope it is.

Being the mildly obsessive person that I am, I put together a training chart for Amy and myself, based on the tips here: http://www.climateride.org/training/training-basics/ One thing to note about the tips is that the prose paragraphs are somewhat less ambitious than the "handy chart that you can use as a guideline to weekly mileage." Given that by the time Amy and I started training we were already behind the curve of the mileage chart, I opted to build our training chart based on the written tips. We'd obviously be in even better shape if we were able to push ourselves to meet the goals in the mileage chart, but given our schedules (work, the poor sleep-habits of a 2-year-old, two school-age children with homework, activities, birthdays, etc, and a house to keep in order) I didn't see those goals as a real option.

Without further ado, here is our training plan as originally written:



This started back in February, of course, and even though winter was mild this year, it was still too cold to be cycling. To start, we did some creative indoor cardio, including things like climbing the stairs of my office building and playing dancing games on Nintendo Wii with the kids. It also included some limited strength training in the house (when you've been a couch potato for so long, you don't necessarily need weights to stress your muscles). Some time around the beginning of March, we began to do actual cycling. Ray has been along for the ride in the trailer for all our bike rides thus far, and the other two kids have ridden with us on a few occasions. For our really long rides, obviously, we'll need different solutions. If you're reading this and you've babysat for us in the past, expect to get a call.

The last few weeks of the chart may be overly optimistic about fitting in both three hour-long rides and multiple days of 5-plus-hour rides, but we'll do the best we can.

We have been mostly successful at sticking to this chart, though on some weeks we've only hit two rides instead of three. Last weekend we did our first long ride, a 2-hour loop of the bike trail that goes around the Baltimore-Washington International Airport (aka the BWI Trail) with a spur to Saw Mill Creek Park. Though tiring, that was an encouraging ride. We rode at a reasonable speed and felt that we could have continued riding if we had needed to do so. Ray did surprisingly well in the bike trailer for two hours too. All of this and more will be detailed in a subsequent post titled "Oh my God, we've got to go up another steep ramp and across route 170 again?" Ok, that's just a working title.

This week will probably be another week where we won't get in the quantity of rides that are on the chart, but our first ride was closer to 70 minutes than 50 minutes, and we will be getting in that all-important 2.5-hour ride.

Amy was wise enough to sign us up for another cycling event: the Ride to End Hunger in Calvert County ride. This "metric century" ride (100 km or 62.1 miles) is well timed to fit in with our training schedule.

Just recently, we got a Climate Ride e-mail reminding us to be sure to train on hills, as there will "definitely be hills, especially on Day 4." Yikes! Hitting the worst hills of the ride after 3 long days of cycling is a daunting prospect. Fortunately, we've got some good hills in our neighborhood as well as some of the routes where we plan to train. Now we just have to start training on them instead of saying "let's do the more gradual incline today."

And there you have it. Our plan to be Climate-Ride-ready by May 19th. You can certainly comment and criticize, but we're too far into this thing to shake it up much now. With only 8 weeks left, this is the time when things get real. So wish us plenty of luck.

Oh, and donate money, because it sure would suck to do all this training and not get to go. ;)

(Don't take that "winky-face" to mean I'm just kidding. Take it to mean that I say this tongue in cheek, but with an underlying subtext of "really, please do it").

Zen and the Art of Bike Trailer Maintenance - by Jamie

During yesterday’s evening training ride, the bike choo-choo got a flat tire. This made me especially frustrated, because it is still a brand new bike choo-choo (still has that new choo-choo smell). There was no sign of puncture, just a tire with no air in it. As Ray says when reading one of his Thomas the Tank Engine books, it was a “sad choo-choo.”

We discovered this situation at pretty much the half-way point of our 40-minute ride, meaning we had a ways to go before getting back home, most of it up-hill. Fortunately, we were the beneficiaries of the kindness of a stranger. Another cyclist, pulling his own bike choo-choo and passenger, offered us the use of his portable bicycle pump. He said that his own choo-choo (I think he used the term "trailer") had a slow leak in one of its tires, so he felt our pain. I am very grateful for the help that man provided. In hindsight, I was not as polite to him as I should have been, due to the frustration I felt as a result of my uncooperative bike choo-choo. Wherever you are, neighbor, thank you very much for your help.

I only got the tire pumped partially up before starting up again—I had difficulty using the portable pump, and I didn’t want to take too much of the kind stranger’s time while his own tire was slowly deflating. The air in the tire lasted until we got home, but was low enough that for the whole ride back I was anxious and moody—worried that it was going to go flat again at any moment. Not to mention the fact that pulling a fully-laden bike choo-choo with a half-flat tire up a long, slow incline is tough going.

What is my point here? My point is that this was a learning experience. The first lesson was simple: always bring a bike pump. The second lesson was deeper: accept the challenges that come with the adventure we’ve chosen. I have an admiration for Buddhism, especially the Zen variety, and yesterday’s training ride was an opportunity for me to practice walking the Eightfold Path (look it up!). Sadly, I missed the opportunity completely. To paraphrase Joey Tribbiani: I was so far past the path, I couldn’t even see the path. The path was a dot to me.

But therein lies the lesson. It turns out that all this training isn’t just about working the body, building the muscles, and improving the lungs. It’s about getting my brain around what it means to ride for a long time, to “be in the saddle” as it were, and to face all the ups and downs, literal and figurative, that come with that.

Om–aranam–arada.

Driving the Bike Choo-Choo - by Amy

When we signed up for Climate Ride, Jamie and I owned one adult-size road bicycle between us. We quickly confirmed that we would be able to borrow a hybrid road/mountain bike from Jamie's parents -- but we wouldn't be able to get it until April. It seemed clear that we needed to train on actual bikes before April, so Jamie suggested that he use our road bike until then and we would get a new hybrid  for me. I wasn't going to say no to a new bike!

We went to the Family Bike Shop in Crofton and had a great experience. A friendly bike geek/employee let me ride several different types around the parking lot to figure out what I liked. We bought a relatively inexpensive Giant hybrid. It sits very upright, which I love and Jamie hates. The only thing I don't like about it is the mint green color, but I figure on a 300-mile bike ride, comfort will be more important than color.

Since I'm home during the day and the weather has been beautiful, I've had plenty of opportunity to take Ray out in what he calls the "bike choo-choo." Pulling a 40-lb toddler isn't easy, but it should be good training, right? Ray loves anything that moves, so he is always excited to climb in the bike choo-choo. If I ride long enough, I'm guaranteed to get him down for a nap, which is a nice perk. If you see me pedaling the choo-choo on the bike trail or the street, please be sure to say hello!

Hey, want to bicycle 300 miles with me? - by Jamie

It was sometime in early February, and Amy and I were sitting in our living room. Our 2-year-old son, Ray, was playing on the floor. I was reading a chapter from George R. R. Martin's  "A Storm of Swords." Amy was surfing the web on our laptop. Then Amy asks me, "want to do Climate Ride with me?" And that's how it all began.

I already knew what Climate Ride was. I had read some about it on the internet, and had even considered the possibility of doing it. But then I saw how soon it was, and thought about my dislike of doing fundraising, and I dismissed it as a non-starter. Amy, it seems, was more optimistic. Or perhaps just more crazy.

When she asked me to do it, I think my first response was to look at her in shock. My second response was to tell her why it seemed like an impossible challenge to me. Be ready to ride sixty miles a day in a little more than 3 months? Raise $2400 each in a little less than 3 months? My third response was to look at the excitement clear in her face and think to myself, "I can't say 'no' to that." Fifteen minutes later I found myself saying, "ok. Let's do it." And right then and there, Amy signed us up.

The next day, I started reading tips on how to fundraise and train for the ride. I laid out a training schedule in a spreadsheet. I brainstormed ideas for fundraising. And I started hitting up my friends on Facebook for donations. I think Amy was a bit shocked at how quickly I went from "are you sure this is a good idea?" to "let's make this happen." I shrugged and said, "I'm all in now. If we're gonna do this thing, I want to make sure we can really do this thing."

About a month later, here we are. We're each at over 20% of our fundraising goals (actually, Amy's doing better than I am with 26% compared to my 20%). We bought Amy a new bike and a trailer to pull Ray in while we train. We've been doing regular cardio and strength training, and have started the actual bike rides now that the weather is warmer. We have a hotel reserved in Manhattan for the night before the ride. And now we have a blog.

So follow along with us as we continue to train for our big adventure. If you have a few bucks to spare, consider donating to our fundraising efforts (every bit helps, and no donation is too small). And when we actually do the ride, check in for our daily updates from the road.

My name is Jamie Britt, and I'm going to go from couch potato to Climate Rider. Let's do some good.