Bike Lakewood - Restarted and Completed (aka, the Coronavirus Diaries part IV)
Back in 2019, one of my resolutions was
Bike Lakewood
I resolve to bike down every street in Lakewood, Ohio.
Alas, it didn't go well. Between the gym and biking to work, I was didn't have much free time to ride around in Lakewood, so ultimately I lost interest and withdrew the resolution.
As it happens, after seven weeks I'm still working at home with a minimum of four weeks to go. My CrossFit box is still closed (and I'm not much interested in Zoom classes), so what to do with the time I was saving by not commuting or working out? I clearly needed to ride my bike. After a ride or two around Lakewood, I realized that starting this resolution over from the beginning and completing it was very doable. I printed the Lakewood street map and got out my trusty highlighter. I rode basically every night the weather allowed it. That's not a ton of nights in April, but today I rode a final 22.0 miles to knock out the last pieces of Lakewood. The last bit was a piece of Sloan eastbound between Phelps and Kenilworth.
In total, I biked 147.4 miles over 11 rides, as told by this this online pedometer. That's an average ride of 13.2 miles. That doesn't sound much like compared to my 17.9 mile bike commute, but since that commute includes both a morning ride and an evening ride, each segment is much less than 13.2 miles. If I'd been really clever I would have taken a picture of the highlighted map after each individual ride and made some kind of cool animation showing the highlights growing to cover the map, but (spoilers) I'm not that clever.
Observations:
- Lakewood appears relatively flat, but it slopes down to the lake, and when you're going from north to south it gets noticeable in a hurry.
- One of my original intents was to explore more of Lakewood. On streets that aren't busy, this works pretty well, but then most of those streets are just houses. There aren't too many architectural styles in Lakewood, so while I found some pretty little streets and unusual houses, it's not like there were revelatory discoveries. I did find a really great place to look at the sunset, so there's that.
- I didn't use electronic mapping tools at all, so there was definitely some doubling up on some streets. If anyone asks, there are definitely far fewer than 147.4 miles of streets in Lakewood. Despite not using those tools, I had no trouble remembering where I'd gone when I pumped it into the online tools. I've always been good at maps, and this showed than when I stop using the tools the skills come back.
- I didn't time myself closely, but it appears my pace is about 10 miles an hours. That means a marathoner running a 2:37 pace (good, but not elite) runs than I bike. Oh well.
- I really do spend a lot of time at the gym.
In addition to these three rides, I got one bike commute in before we started working from home and did two long rides west ( 26.2 and 35.0 miles), so I'm at 226.5 miles on the year. I'm 100% certain that I've never been at that many miles on May 2 before. In fact, I'm pretty sure that my best March and April combined aren't half of that. Since the last goal of the original resolution was to get me to ride more, I guess that part worked out.
Bike Lakewood
I resolve to bike down every street in Lakewood, Ohio.
Alas, it didn't go well. Between the gym and biking to work, I was didn't have much free time to ride around in Lakewood, so ultimately I lost interest and withdrew the resolution.
As it happens, after seven weeks I'm still working at home with a minimum of four weeks to go. My CrossFit box is still closed (and I'm not much interested in Zoom classes), so what to do with the time I was saving by not commuting or working out? I clearly needed to ride my bike. After a ride or two around Lakewood, I realized that starting this resolution over from the beginning and completing it was very doable. I printed the Lakewood street map and got out my trusty highlighter. I rode basically every night the weather allowed it. That's not a ton of nights in April, but today I rode a final 22.0 miles to knock out the last pieces of Lakewood. The last bit was a piece of Sloan eastbound between Phelps and Kenilworth.
In total, I biked 147.4 miles over 11 rides, as told by this this online pedometer. That's an average ride of 13.2 miles. That doesn't sound much like compared to my 17.9 mile bike commute, but since that commute includes both a morning ride and an evening ride, each segment is much less than 13.2 miles. If I'd been really clever I would have taken a picture of the highlighted map after each individual ride and made some kind of cool animation showing the highlights growing to cover the map, but (spoilers) I'm not that clever.
Observations:
- Lakewood appears relatively flat, but it slopes down to the lake, and when you're going from north to south it gets noticeable in a hurry.
- One of my original intents was to explore more of Lakewood. On streets that aren't busy, this works pretty well, but then most of those streets are just houses. There aren't too many architectural styles in Lakewood, so while I found some pretty little streets and unusual houses, it's not like there were revelatory discoveries. I did find a really great place to look at the sunset, so there's that.
- I didn't use electronic mapping tools at all, so there was definitely some doubling up on some streets. If anyone asks, there are definitely far fewer than 147.4 miles of streets in Lakewood. Despite not using those tools, I had no trouble remembering where I'd gone when I pumped it into the online tools. I've always been good at maps, and this showed than when I stop using the tools the skills come back.
- I didn't time myself closely, but it appears my pace is about 10 miles an hours. That means a marathoner running a 2:37 pace (good, but not elite) runs than I bike. Oh well.
- I really do spend a lot of time at the gym.
In addition to these three rides, I got one bike commute in before we started working from home and did two long rides west ( 26.2 and 35.0 miles), so I'm at 226.5 miles on the year. I'm 100% certain that I've never been at that many miles on May 2 before. In fact, I'm pretty sure that my best March and April combined aren't half of that. Since the last goal of the original resolution was to get me to ride more, I guess that part worked out.