12.8 Miles
21.94 mph
The bike ride was pretty uneventful. It was much shorter than what I have been doing lately, so it wasn't too hard and I kept a good pace with my cadence in the 90's the whole time, which is good. The girl next to me took 8 (yes I counted) phone calls on her iPhone during her 30 minute ride, each from a different person. That's pretty impressive, not only that 8 people would call her to chat, or that they would do it all within 30 minutes of each other, but that she would take the calls, all of them, while working out. I don't get eight phone calls a day and this girl gets eight without even trying. Clearly I need a new social circle.
Also, I started listening to Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen in audiobook format. It's a fascinating tale of a tribe in Mexico that runs super long distances, barefoot and have no real injury or health problems. I'm only a bit into the third chapter, but so far it's really good. I'll try to remember to do a full review when I finish it. For now, take this quote from the second chapter,
But why? Antelope don't get shin splints. Wolves don't ice-pack their knees. I doubt that 80% of all wild mustangs are annually disabled with impact injuries. It reminded me of a proverb attributed to Roger Bannister, who, while simultaneously studying medicine, working as a clinical researcher and minting pithy parables, became the first man to break the 4-minute mile: "Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up," Bannister said. "It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn't matter whether you're a lion or a gazelle - when the sun comes up, you'd better be running."
So why should every other mammal on the planet be able to depend on its legs except us? Come to think of it, how could a guy like Bannister charge out of the lab every day, pound around a hard cinder track in thin leather slippers, and not only get faster, but never get hurt? How come some of us can be out there running all lion-like and Bannister-ish every morning when the sun comes up, while the rest of us need a fistful of Ibuprofen before we can put our feet on the floor?
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