8-14-05 bike ride (and cheap shoe rant)

[Systematic Chaos]

This morning I got up even earlier than I planned on, at 3:15 rather than 4:00, to ride with Jeanette to the bus stop where she loads her bike on to go to work. I tried using my normal Sketcher shoes today in place of the special shoes for people with sensitive feet that I got recently. I ended up having to get the special shoes because when I was retaining so much water back in June, I could no longer get my feet into my normal work shoes (a pair of high top Carolina work shoes). I needed something with more "give" and velcro straps, so Jeanette ended up in (yeah, I know) Wal-Mart to get me a pair. I simply won't do Payless because their level of quality is even lower than Wal-Mart, believe it or not. Problem with the new shoes was that where they stitched two pieces of material together, it created a seam inside the shoe that literally wore a crevace in the pinky toe of my left foot along the side and top. This ultimately turned into a nasty blister/corn combination that made it impossible to wear any kind of normal shoes, in only 3 days. It's been healing up fine and never became infected even as ugly as it was at first, so I thought I would try the Sketchers on my ride. By the end of it there was no question that I'm not ready yet and will need to keep wearing the Safefeet shoes I have even though their design causes my feet to want to slide out of them sideways. Still it's better than being in pain.

Anyways, here are my stats from today's ride:

Time (Tm): 35m 55s
Average Speed (AS): 8.2mph
Maximum Speed (MS): 18.1mph
Distance (Ds): 4.90 miles

I will post these stats in this forum from now on. I'm just a little slow at remembering how many different places there are to post, and I want to try and keep things where they belong. Here is the post, in the Weight loss forum, of my first ride I took early Saturday morning, for anyone interested. It describes the area I ride in and such.

Edited for typos.