Let the Training Begin

I did my first official day of training, partly to assess all of the bike upgrades and partly to assess me. The bike upgrades worked perfectly. I need work.

For this training start I did forty miles on the Silver Comet trail. Including a few breaks and lots of signal lights (really annoying) that took about three hours. To put that in perspective, to accomplish the Southern Tier route in about a month, I'll need to average one hundred miles a day (ignoring rest days). A bit optimistic? Probably.

The Silver Comet trail is nice and all, but it's a fifty-six mile round-trip drive and aside from the very start of the trail - which features a monstrous hill crowded with pedestrians, strollers and tricycles - it's a fairly subdued ride, which isn't exactly going to suffice for training.

As a substitute I've mapped a ride (a big loop) that follows roads through the Chattahooche National Forest and features thousands of feet of climbing. Mastering that will be Step 1. Mastering that with 30+ pounds of luggage will be Step 2.

I look forward to the challenge of spending a month trying to consume 5,000+ calories a day.