Hey everyone! In an attempt to diversify my account to more than Splinterlands alone, I want to try to make posting about my mountainbiking trips a recurring thing, usually every Thursday and Sunday are my sport days where on Thursday I try to go inline-skating but whether it's possible or not depends on too many factors to do skating alone, it's something I had difficulties with in the past when I skated a lot in the summer, but had to completely stop in the winter because the roads with the low temperatures are mostly wet.

When you would have told me ten years ago I would get in to biking, I probably would have laughed at you - cycling more than 5km I would only do with my kids but biking as a sport is something totally different, I still have to learn a lot and that's fine but I'm finding a lot of joy in not only going out there, but also planning my next trip because one of the things I've learned is you have to check the wind direction and speed before heading out, you'll regret this if you don't, I learned this the hard way of course. 😅

Well, 16 degrees and not a lot of wind and sun is perfect for me, last week I had my first wet ride, which wasn't too bad but dry conditions are better.

The first couple of trips I got numb hands and even feet after cycling more than 30 minutes, this week I've studied about seat positioning and height and made some adjustments and I bought some nice gloves, and today for the first time, no numbness - awesome!

I've bought these gloves on AliExpress for about €7 and the quality looks very good, only time will tell if they don't fall apart after a couple of months.

Preparation isn't only checking the weather and getting dressed, but also providing the body with some fuel to burn, so when I got up at 6:30 I started with two sandwiches, a glass of water and a coffee before I got dressed.

This is how my bike now looks, with all the goodies that now arrived from AliExpress, I'm sure I would've paid at least double the amount when I got these items at my local bike shop.

A small saddle bag with some tools in it to make small repair and fix a flat tire, and alcohol pads to disinfect wounds when something goes wrong and I end up on the road plus a bag for a small pump and to hold my phone so I can see my average speed and check the map when it's needed.

Last week I went to a Decathlon store where I bought a SKS tire pump with pressure meter and a bicycle bell so I don't have to shout to people to let me pass, shouting to get out of my way doesn't add any positivity to the already bad image sport cyclist have in my country (and for good reason because a lot of them live up to this sadly).

On the side of my tires, 65 PSI is printed, but that's 4.5 bar - that's a lot of pressure! I think this is only the maximum pressure and not the recommended pressure, I'm going with 2 bar now, or 29 PSI which feels good.

Off we go!

So, I planned my route facing the wind, so the return trip would be a little easier if I got tired, I had a general idea about what route I would take and what would be my point of return but I didn't knew exactly the distance for this trip, I was aiming for 20 - 25km since my last wet Sunday ride was 23km and it felt good, hopefully I could make this one a bit faster.

This is on one of the many dykes in my neighborhood, it's the other side of the same river (called 'de Linge') I was riding on last Sunday.

I understand when people think it's silly for riding a mountain bike in a country without mountains, or hills... I just don't like the look of men with shaven legs in spandex clothing, let alone I want to be one of them. 😅

Of course they are more efficient with less rolling and wind resistance since I'm riding on 2.4" or 6 centimeters, plus this way, when I can get more distance in one training, I want to try out off road single trails as well, really looking out for this!

As far as I know, there's only two trail loops in my area.

Now I'm making this post, I'm realizing I need to make a couple of more pictures for next time, when I can't show off any goodies anymore, I was just enjoying pedaling hard and going fast. 😄

So, while enjoying nature and pushing myself a bit, I'm also keeping an eye out for discarded cans and bottles worth 15 cents each in my country, I stop and collect them so I can spend the money as an extra in my favorite game @splinterlands, I use this to buy more SPS with so I can earn better rewards and receive 10% APR staking rewards as well, almost on the halfway point I already collected 6 cans and bottles, and that's the maximum I can hold without any additional bags 😏 good thing I was very close to my work's warehouse so I went there to drop them so my bags were empty again.

In total on this trip, I collected 9 cans and bottles, worth €1.35 so I can buy 150 SPS with it at today's price, a win-win for sure, cleaning the side of the roads too!

This is on the way back where I just passed the village called 'Nieuwland' and with the wind blowing mostly from behind me, I could speed up here, reaching speeds around 27 km/h. (ronde 19 and 20, ronde is every kilometer measured separately, it's cool to track my training with both Fitbit and Strava, it provides a lot of nerdy information. 😁

I didn't want to go all-in with my energy because I knew I still had around 8 or 9 kilometers to go, on the last stretch of smooth and straight asphalt, I even had enough energy left to make a sprint where I reached 31 km/h. Pretty fast for me now as a beginner, but I'll probably laugh at this a year from now, we'll see.

Fun fact: When my wife got out of bed and checked our shared location app Life360, according to the app I was driving a car. 😂

The cool thing about starting with a new type of sport is the improvements in the first weeks are phenomenal, it's exciting to keep making new personal records, Strava is a really cool app to track things like that.

So, this was my longest ride so far with 27.6 km which took me just over the hour with an average speed of 24.7 km/h.

More distance with a higher average speed, I really had fun and it felt great and I almost felt sorry I arrived back home, I really need to be aware I don't push my body too far in my excitement though, it's one of the few benefits when you get older, getting to know yourself. 😏

Measured calories is just an estimation because Strava isn't connected to my Fitbit smartwatch, the amount of power is a lot higher than last week in wet conditions, 91 watts compared to 76 watts last week, I'm still humbled by the numbers other more experienced people are sharing, there's a gentleman in my city I'm following on Strava, he's a lot older than I am and yesterday he did 65km with an average speed of 28.1 km/h with 127 watt power, not to mention erikklok here on Hive, he cycled 130km yesterday! 😵

The reason why Fitbit has a longer time with lower average speed is it doesn't pause when I stop to make a picture for my post and to pick up the discarded cans and bottles, even with stopping my average heart rate was a nice 140,enough exercise for one day. 😃

Next time, I'll remember to take more pictures but I probably won't do this weekly - not sure.. the post making that is, the cycling I will definitely will do.

I couldn't rest the remainder of the day though... my daughter likes to take a walk together on our days off, and I can't abandon her because I found a new hobby, so I'll just do both - after drinking, eating and resting for an hour.. we walked 4km, it's also nice so I have enough steps for my actifit post tonight! 😁

Thanks for stopping by!