Rumbling Monday and App-y Wednesday

I was able to go for my ride on Monday, but I was unable to blog because I had to get ready for my second class of the summer. After a very lazy weekend, it was nice to get on the bike. I was worried that predicted storms would prevent me from going, but I awoke to lightning far off in the distance. It was sprinkling lightly and a check of the radar showed there wasn't much more headed my way in the near future. I enjoyed the cooler temperatures compared to my last ride on Friday. I was also able to get some pretty amazing photographs of the storm front that moved through before my ride.

After a lazy weekend, the top of that bridge was a tough one! I didn't want to do it but I knew that I could if I just pushed myself a little harder.
I didn't end up riding my bike on Tuesday, and I realized that it contributed to me feeling more stressed and overwhelmed by the day ahead. My early morning rides really do relax me (which sounds strange because I am working out LOL), and they give me a chance to have some quiet time for myself. This is even more important on days when I am lucky if I spend more than a couple of my awake hours at home. Monday and Tuesday were both very similar in terms of how much time I got to spend at home and how much running around I had to do, but Monday was much less stressful for me because I got to go for my morning ride. If I run into a morning where my bed feels just too comfortable to leave, I am going to try to remember that!
All this time I have simply been estimating the total distance of my ride. My husband has a little computer on his bike that tells him his speed and distance. I did not get this same computer for my bike so I just figured-it's six blocks from my house to the trail-take that times two and that is about one mile. I know the total distance across the top and bottom of the bridge is one mile and everything in between I figured to be about three miles total. On Monday I had a wonderful thought...I bet there is an app for that! I always take my phone with me on my ride for snapping pictures, so why not use it to record my distance? After my ride on Monday, I sat down and browsed the Google Play store. I found an app called MapMyRide. I installed it and tried it out this morning (a few blocks into my ride because I forgot about it!). It uses GPS to track my distance and it records the total time of my ride and uses these two pieces of information to calculate an average speed. The speed calculations don't take my stops to take pictures into consideration, but it could if I just paused it while I took photos (I just don't care enough to take the time to do it). I will run the app again tomorrow morning so I can get a completely accurate distance BUT I am happy to say that I am pretty good at estimating because my ride this morning was about 5 1/4 miles long.

I am really happy with the app-it audibly updates me every mile-telling me the distance I am at and what my average speed is. When I am done, it gives me this little screen with a summary of my ride. This did make me laugh a bit...anyone want to guess what mile I hit my challenging ride to the top of the bridge? All in all, it was a nice morning ride with another beautiful sunrise :o)