the end of the Blogger Bike Week challenge

although technically anyone who wants to report in still has a couple of hours to do so, i'm officially marking the end of the challenge from my part. please excuse the terrible cell-phone quality of Agent Orange there - it's tired and trying to sleep.

today's ride was cut short by... you guessed it: more rain storms! i'd hoped to hit at least 50 kms, but i'll have to make do.

• Total Distance: 46.376 km
• Max Speed: 38.6 km/h
• Avg Speed: 22.9 km/h
• Total Time: 2:01:46
• Calories Burned: 1520.0
• Calories from Fat Burned: 186

i did get to see a few interesting things today. at one point i saw a crew trying to lift the frame for an in-ground pool with a crane over a person's house. i watched and secretly hoped to see it come crashing down, but in the 10 minutes i waited around they didn't get it more than a foot off the ground. also at three different points in my ride some local little kids tried their damnedest to race me on their little bmx bikes.

SO, now that it's all said and done, here's the grand totals for me for the week:

• Total Distance: 165.82 km (103.04 miles)
• Max Speed: 44.6 km/h (27.7 miles per hour) on wednesday
• Avg Speed: 21.8 km/h (13.5 miles per hour)
• Total Time: 7:35:37
• Calories Burned: 5336
• Calories from Fat Burned: 631.8

if i had driven that distance during the week (and i'm sure i would have) my car would have burned approximately 11 liters of gas (about 3 gallons) which would have cost me close to $15 and would have produced 26.4 kg (about 58.2 lbs) in carbon dioxide emissions. in return, i've been eating more (yay for eating!), sleeping better (yay for sleeping) and enjoying my commute. heck, even when that guy hit me with his car yesterday i enjoyed shouting at him. it felt good to just explode on the guy.

although i know that completely abandoning my car while living in the city is next to impossible, i think i'm going to try to keep this up a bit. this week i didn't use my car and either walked or biked to where i needed to go. i found that a 10 minute drive to the mall is actually only about a 15 minute walk - and there's no frustration in the parking garage. i realized that a 5 minute drive to the grocery store is a 10 minute walk. if i keep this up, i'll drop the office belly in no time.

anyone who took park should either post their result in the comments here, or on your own blog or website and i'll link back to you.