I was only able to bike to work 8 times in May, due to a variety of reasons.. early in the month, I caught a cold, and various obligations at home made it necessary to take the car on several days I otherwise would have biked. Later in the month, I had a week where I couldn’t drag myself out of bed in time to get moving (it’s amazing how much a single late night out screws up my body clock nowadays). I also had this mysterious dry cough that came out of nowhere and persisted for about 4 days. But, now it’s the end of the month and I seem to be back in a good routine. Despite the relative infrequency of my rides, I managed to ride in at least one day each week of the month. My average speed is now consistently over 14mph. This morning I averaged 14.8mph, my high for the season so far.

This past weekend, I picked up two new pairs of biking shorts on sale at Performance. One has the standard chamois padding and the other has this gel stuff. The price was the same, so I figured I’d try ’em both. I’ve ridden once with each pair now. The chamois pair is fine, but the stitching on the gel pair bothered me a little bit. I’ll see how it goes as they break in, but so far I’m not crazy about these.

I’ve also logged almost 1000 miles on my cyclocomputer, a Cateye Astrale. Verdict so far: It’s nice, and I especially like the cadence feature. However, I wish it gave some kind of audio feedback when starting/stopping the timer. There have been a lot of times where I’ve thought I’ve started it but it wasn’t actually running, and vice-versa, and as a result I haven’t gotten any statistics for a particular ride. Forgetting to start/stop it is one thing, but it’s really annoying when I’ve actually made a point to do it, and still don’t get my stats. Otherwise, though, I really like it. Cateye has come out with a newer model since I got mine, so I wonder if they’ve addressed this problem.

June will start out with a week of no biking due to my business trip. However, I hope to get right back into it afterwards.