Cycling With Susan

Susan and I are both teachers with close to fifty combined years-experience teaching high school mathematics, so you know that we love what we do.  We work long, hard hours during the school year, but also recognize that we are blessed to enjoy a summer vacation that is much longer than most professions allow.  It is during the early morning hours of these days that we enjoy cycling the most.  The heat and humidity at dawn in Tidewater, Virginia is like a promise from Mother Nature that she will bake you by midday, but at that time of the morning is intoxicating.  And while mid-August brings a certain excitement to our lives as we gear up for our students, there is also a certain amount of sadness as we lose the freedom to bike whenever the weather is favorable, regardless of the day of the week.  We still have some days left, mainly on the weekends, and will try to bike into October, and those dates—because of their infrequency—will become even more special....

With an app for just about everything, there are many choices for cycling to help keep track of your rides, and Strava is one of the best.  As I understand it, Strava got its start as a cycling app and has branched out into other activities.  Keeping with my philosophy to not pay for phone apps (seems like a can of worms to me), Susan and I only use the free version of Strava.  However, it comes with a load of features including tracking mileage, time, rate, and recording a map of your trip.  It also recently added a “segments” and a “legends” feature to allow you to compare well-travelled routes against other cyclists.  The app has always run smoothly, syncing seamlessly with my Garmin app and Susan’s FitBit app without any glitches.  I really am considering a subscription because I am getting so much value out of it and feel like I owe it to them. In July 2020, Strava and Trek teamed up for the Trek Century Challenge: bike 100, 500, or 1000 mi...