Little Girl on a Fast Bike in a Big City

"People always want to know what I'm on. What am I on? I'm on my bike busting my ass six hours a day" -Lance Armstrong


Milwaukee is not, sad to say, the best place in the world to learn how to bike. It may actually, be the worst. The roads aren't well kept, and the drivers are rude. Only select portions of the bike trails are paved, and oftentimes when you wake up in the morning you never know if it's going to rain or snow or be sunny and 80.

Over the past week, however, I've made it my mission to find the best way possible to tour this city on a bike. The first couple of times I ended up just doing multiple loops around places that I had run. I felt like some sort of ghost haunting the parkways where I used to do tempo runs and long runs and the roads behind our track where I used to  do intervals.

After that I started getting more adventurous. One day I road down to Miller Park and did some fast laps around the Brewer's parking lot before finding  a bike trail to head back down. Another day I followed a parkway that I thought was only 4 miles long (I used to do speed workouts on it) and I ended up making it almost 20 miles north.

I've also accidentally ended up biking on crazy busy streets or in really bad neighborhoods by accident. Because Milwaukee goes for miles and doesn't dead-end into country roads like my hometown does it's hard to know where a street will take you. The other problem about biking in Milwaukee is that the streets are often both bumpy and littered. There have been times where I'm so scared that I'm going to pop one of my tires because of the glass in the road or the huge potholes.

Oh, and one last thing about Milwaukee: The driver's do not care about you. It's not like they switch lanes to give me an extra couple of feet or drive slowly when passing me. Usually they blow by me, flipping me off as they go. Last year, when I started biking, I did a whole post about how afraid I was to fall off a bike. Now, I'm more afraid of falling off due to getting run off the road.

By Thursday I was finally getting the picture: I had to get out of the city. I took some back roads all the way to a different town and finally was able to get some speed. I ended up in the city of Waukesha and toured around there a bit.

Saturday, I went on my first group ride ever. The two guys that I went with have been biking for longer than I've been alive. One of them, 70 years old, completely destroyed me the entire ride. He said that with his team (yeah, he has a sponsorship at 70) averages 22-26mph  for their entire rides. Safe to say I got my biking-short butt kicked my someone 50 years older than I am.

But that said, what they taught me about biking was invaluable. It's also becoming clear to me, that the adventurous side of me actually likes biking better than running. In running I can't get 25 miles away at the drop of a hat. I can't go exploring in other towns or country roads. And seriously "I ran 7 miles" doesn't sound half as cool as "I biked 50 miles"

I Believe I Can Fly (Run)

"I'm always doing things I can't do. That's how I get to do them." ~Pablo Picasso


I went running this week. Well sort of. As much as running at 50% of my body weight counts for "real running".As you may remember I spent all of last summer training on the Alter G, a high-tech sciency looking treadmill. Quick recap...the Alter-G allows you to run at a certain percentage of your body weight and is an ideal way to ease back into running without running the risk of hurting yourself again.

When I first stepped on the Alter-G this past Tuesday I was a little bit mystified to say the least. Running...has sadly become so foreign to me that, as much as it pains me to tell you this, I forgot how to run. Yes, I did. The treadmill started moving and I was already suspended at the 50% and I just kind of lifted up my feet and started this awkward aqua-jogging movement. I literally forgot to put my feet down on the ground. I floundered around for a second until I got into the rhythm. But I made it. And that's the important part. Not only did I just make it, I ran 40 minutes at roughly 7:20 pace. As amazing as that was Thursday was even better. My knees have been giving me some grief as you all know, so I didn't think that I would get to run, but sure enough I was allowed to.

My heel, however, hasn't been giving me any problems. I feel like all of a sudden I had some sort of miraculous healing. In fact, I feel like I could run. I feel like I could fly sometimes (wouldn't you at 50% of your body weight?)

So not only did I get to run, I also have gotten back on the bike after a whole week off. Because, as I may have stated before, I'm an idiot and decided to do 250 miles of biking one week (including but not limited to 4 spin classes in 6 days. ) But luckily I've been taking care of my knee and taking it easy and working on my alignment.

According to my physical therapist, my long history of knee problems stems primarily from some alignment problems. When I do whatever I do...bike, run, climb stairs etc...my knees tend to bow inward because of some underdeveloped VMO muscles and some nonexistant hip strength (yeah. that one I knew) and just because apparently thats how my natural mechanics work and  my body can't figure out how to do it correctly.  So, he said that when I'm walking, climbing, biking, to just to be conscious of keeping my knees straight over my toes, even if it feels like I'm forcing them outwards a bit. And BAM! all of a sudden my knee starts hurting less and less every day. In fact, if I concentrate really, really hard during exercise they've actually been feeing better after biking and ellipticalling. Why? WHY? didn't someone tell me this crucial piece of information when I spend alllll last summer struggling through patellofemoral huh?

And I've also been doing quite a bit of yoga to work on core strength, hip strength, and knee flexibility. Plus the meditative aspect has been helping me quite a bit as well.

Oh....and the most important part? Today in Madison was a little exhibition called Bike O' Rama. There were many, many beautiful things there. Including these which came home with me. :)