Morning Traffic Alert

Today is my day off. I usually get a day off during the week if I get the pleasure of working on Saturday morning. What a trade! I can do all those weekend things during the week without the weekend rush.  It's nice.  Today I plan on doing a Costco run and a trip to REI to buy a cycling jersey. I haven't been on my bike all season. How stupid am I?! I decided to get some riding done this morning.

It's going to be a hot one today. I got up at 5am...on my day off. Who does that? I do because it's going to be near 100 this afternoon and I was really aching to get some mileage in.
Knowing lastnight that I was going to be getting up early, I prepped my bike for the morning. I didn't want to give myself any excuses to get out of the ride. The only thing I had to do this morning was fill my water bottles and hit the road. I did dottle around for about a half hour trying to get myself to wake up and get some breakfast into my body. Thank god I remembered I didn't have a trail pass, so I had to get out the checkbook and pay the DNR for use of their trails. Of course there was no one on the route to check to see if I actually had my pass. Oh well. Now I'll have it for next time.

The Badger State Trail passes just west of my neighborhood giving me very easy access. From the trail head to the south, the trail is all limestone, to the north from the trail head, it is paved. So I headed north towards Madison. The trail becomes the South West Commuter trail as it gets into Madison proper. I hit the Madison line right around 6:20. There weren't that many people on the trail at that point and crossing some of the major roads wasn't too time consuming. For those of you that know Madison, I hit trail traffic right after the trail passed Odana Rd. I was amazed how many people were commuting into downtown from outlying areas. I really wish I had the ability to do this and not show up to work completely sweaty. (I have a retail banking job and there is no shower in the building, so there is no way for me to be presentable and appropriate when I'm meeting with customers if I bike to work.) I actually hit a Thursday morning traffic jam on the SW Commuter Trail once I hit Camp Randall (this was my turn around point).

According to my Garmin, I rode 19.6 miles before my Garmin's battery died. That will teach me to charge it overnight before. Ooops! If you want to view my Garmin info, you can do so HERE.

Looking East from Seminole Hwy

Overall, I believe I did about 23 miles of riding. Thats a good first ride for me. I didn't have any flats, like last year's first ride. 

The other point to this ride was to see if it was something I could complete before going to work. There is a 12 mile out and back that I could do it under an hour. This is definitely doable to before work. I have no excuse not to. As long as I can get back home before 7, I should be able to pull it off easily.

Ps. So far no pain from my SI joint yet. That is always good news.