Bicycle Insights

This morning I had a bunch of early meetings and then headed out on my daily bike ride of 16 miles. I didn't mind waiting a bit as the morning started cold and I prefer to ride when the temperature is at least 68 degrees Fahrenheit. While out on my ride I remembered the story of my dad at the beginning of his cycling obsession.

For some reason my dad thought it would be good to take a bunch of boys from Sandy, Utah all the way down to Lake Powell. Naturally he came up with the idea during winter and began training on an indoor bike in his basement. Every day he would watch a little television and pedal at a leisurely pace. When the snow finally melted and he headed out on his first outdoor ride, he went 7 miles. He put two large water bottles on his bike and drank both of them on his short ride. He didn't know how he could ride more than a few miles without carrying gallons of water. Only then did he realize that his indoor training did not have the intensity required to build up conditioning for a 300 to 400-mile bike ride over several days. To make a long story short, he increased his training and made it all the way to Lake Powell with a group of Scouts and their leaders.

Yesterday I had a lazy day and opted to ride indoors instead of outside. Fortunately I usually ride outside and know the level of intensity required to benefit my training goals. Without real-world experience it is difficult to know the right level of training required.

I am currently working on a project with some new software and services. Unfortunately I don't have any of that real-world experience and all I can do is look at documentation and simple examples. I think I have things figured out but I know I need to put my knowledge into practice and test it with real-world scenarios. To do so, I reached out to my technical team and will start working with them to configure the software for our projected use cases. Only then will I know if my book knowledge is enough.