I'm on my seventh day and I've traversed a grand total of 138 miles. It's not very impressive, but as I've mentioned, I'm forcing myself to take it nice and slow, despite my inclination to just keep it moving. I feel if I can't complete this journey without getting injured, I should re-think my ocean rowing project. Based on my rowing timeline estimates, I'm even behind what I'm expecting to complete in a week of rowing - around 175 miles. I'm mainly concerned with my knees, I don't want to strain any muscles or irritate any tendons. After around 3 hours of riding, I start feeling the stress on my knees, hence the 3 days I've taken to rest in the first week. My goal is to comfortably ride for at least 5 hours per day, completing at least 50 miles per day.

Other than adjusting physically, everything seems to be holding up fairly well, other than anything I have that inflates. I woke one morning to 3 flat tires - both of my bike tires and one of my trailer tires. I patched all three tubes, which helped for a while. They held for a couple of days but ended up keeping a slow leak. I ended up changing the bike tubes with a self-sealing type of tube in addition to adding a puncture liner inside of both tires. Hopefully they will hold up for a while. I also have a small one-man inflatable air mattress that died on me. I'm going to try and patch it tonight. I've gone through the gamut of emotions - gratitude that I'm in a position to even try something like this, frustration in my physical performance, questioning why I'm even doing this, to really enjoying the scenery and people I've met along the way. The good news is I can tell I'm already getting stronger. My efforts thus far are giving me some good insight on what's in store once I arrive to the East coast for my rowing training. Up next is the continuous climb to the continental divide! Until next time.

Pedal On