Despite my best intentions, my training program has completely collapsed. Yesterday was my first ride since getting back to Seattle, which means it has been almost a month since I’ve been on my bike for anything more than the short commute to work. Last month, I only got 330 miles on the bike, and most of that in the first couple weeks. Granted, after a sweet month of New England spring biking, the week of the cold, brutal late Nor’easter snapped me off the bike and back into my Eskimo coat and I don’t feel bad about it.

A month from today, I’m supposedly pointing the bike north from Boston and heading to Newfoundland. While I spent a good part of the winter giving lectures around Boston, inspiring folks to go bike touring despite not being in the best shape, I am starting to get a bit worried about my own riding! Training for touring is an odd, difficult thing to do in town because it is cumbersome to travel around for mile after mile with a loaded bike. It’s really not realistic. But I am a big proponent of seat time and then staging your tour so that the first week is easy. The problem for me is that I have no idea how hilly the coast of Maine really is (you can’t trust car drivers to really know), then there’s Nova Scotia which looks incredibly hilly, and I’ve have a deadline as the boyfriend will fly to St. John’s to join me for a couple weeks of touring.

At this point, only a month out, I’m planning on staying the course, trying to scoot out daily on the bike and keeping a ride journal. Seattle is better than Boston for hill training and I’m sure that will help. I’ll have to think harder about training next winter. Maybe I should start looking for a bike camp?