Monthly Archives: July 2021

July mileage and other musings

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I managed to make it through July with no health setback. Considering recent events, I’m considering that a big win. I ended up riding 325 miles in July. And there I am, talking about miles again. Tracking mileage, and working to make mileage goals, is a great way to keep yourself motivated to keep turning those pedals. But I’ve gotten some very strong reminders this month that mileage isn’t the most important thing to consider about my riding.

When I moved to Gun Barrel City in 2013, I had been riding over 7,000 miles a year (that’s averaging over 140 miles a week) for several years. With that move and my change in jobs, I knew that my mileage would have to become less. My lifestyle no longer allowed for that much riding. I also knew that, living out here in BFE, there would be few organized rides in my future; it would mostly be just solo rides. I settled on 100 miles a week as a realistic goal. At my 15 mph average on the bike, that would be 7 hours a week of riding. 7 hours a week is seen by many as the gold standard goal for aerobic exercise. And studies had shown that if your heart has diastolic dysfunction (which mine does), 400 minutes a week (just under 7 hours) of aerobic exercise was the amount that showed the best gains and maintenance for that condition. So 100 miles a week became my new goal.

But I knew all along that the day would come when I could no longer average 15 mph on the bike. Much sooner than I expected, that day has arrived. I’m still making improvements in my speed since I’ve gotten back on the bike, but the gains are very gradual now, and I have doubts that I’ll ever reach that 15 mph average again. I’m currently averaging just under 14 mph on the bike. With that average, 90 miles a week gets me the 7 hours of riding I think I need. Last month, I had ridden 100 miles three weeks in a row when I suddenly had unexplained pneumonia. I was forced to consider the possibility that I was overdoing it with my attempt at getting fit again. So for this month, I cut back to 90 miles a week. I’ve just been doing three 30 mile rides a week. If I do get faster on the bike again, I could always increase my mileage goal again.

But then another mileage complication came along. Two weeks ago, after completing my three rides for the week, I went fossil hunting, hiking along two new creeks. Both creeks were especially difficult hiking, and I realized when I got home that I had gotten as much of a workout from that hiking as I do from a 30 mile bike ride, if not more. And I was feeling like I had overdone it that week. So, from now on, any difficult fossil hunting hikes I make will be taken into consideration for my aerobic exercise hours that week. That’s another hit to my mileage goals. So, I’m thinking it’s time to move on from mileage goals. I need to do my best to get my seven hours of aerobic exercise every week that I can, and call it good.

And speaking of fossil hunting, I have added that to my blog. When I started this blog, I did it retroactively, putting together posts from a couple of years of posts in two cycling forums and a lung cancer support forum, and changing the blog dates on those posts to back when I had first posted them in the forums. I’m doing the same thing with my fossil hunting. I started fossil hunting in April of last year. I had taken a month off work at a time when so much was shut down because of COVID, and I was already working enough less hours that I decided it was time to add this hobby I had been fascinated with for many years. Up to now, the fossil hunting posts in this blog have been taken from posts I made in The Fossil Forum, and dated with the dates I posted them there. From now on, I will make separate posts here. I may make some posts here on days when I didn’t find anything of enough significance to bother posting in The Fossil Forum. And if I post in both, I’ll likely make the post here less technical. It’s a great hobby, and I’m having a blast with it.

The route for my last ride of the month on the 29th.

NSR – July 23rd

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I made a trip to the North Sulfur River yesterday. I was was trying out a new part of the river. The FM2990 bridge had been my favorite spot on the river to hunt, but things have changed. They are damming up the river to build a new lake, Lake Ralph Hall. This has closed the fossil park near Ladonia, so they built a new parking lot and made access a lot easier at the FM2990 bridge. With all the new fossil hunters going there, I knew I needed a new spot, so yesterday, I tried this spot further down the river, at the FM2675 bridge. I didn’t find much there, so I’m going to keep looking at new spots on the river.

Like further up the river, there were lots and lots of Egogyra Ponderosa oysters, including some beautiful large specimens. But they are very heavy to carry around in a backpack, and I already have plenty of them at home, so I resisted the temptation to pick up more. You expect to find large stuff at NSR, and after hiking quite a ways down the river without finding much at all, I decided that on the hike back, I needed to start looking for small stuff.

Here are the bones from the trip. Nothing I can identify, but cool all the same. Click the photos to be able to zoom in and get a closer look.

Where I hunted further up the river, there are lots and lots of baculites to be found. Here, all I could find were small broken pieces of baculites, like the two on the left in this photo. I thought the tiny ammonite on the right was cool, though.

I’ve always liked finding pieces of worm tubes like the ones in this photo. It can be really hard to spot them at NSR, though.

And finally, the teeth. Teeth always seem to be really hard to find at NSR, and when you do, they’re usually in rough shape, like these two in the bottom photo. And the top photo shows what you’re searching in to find them.

Ellis County creek – July 8th

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After nine months, I finally made it back to the Ellis County creek where I’ve found so many teeth. This is an Eagle Ford outcrop. The water level was much higher than I expected. It wasn’t quite up to the matrix that holds most of the fossils, but high enough to make wading across the creek dicey, plus I didn’t get to hunt most of the sand bars.

This is the biggest fish vert I’ve ever found. Most of the fish verts I’ve found in this creek aren’t in very good condition either, but this one is in really nice shape. Click the photos to be able to zoom in and get a closer look.

As usual for this creek, most of the Ptychodus teeth I found were pretty small, but I did find these two nicer ones.

These are still in the matrix. They are mosasaur verts. I’ve never found mosasaur verts in the creek before, and today I found two of them.

As usual for this creek, I brought home lots of interesting looking matrix to go through.

Here are the other teeth I found. As usual, there were more Ptychodus teeth than anything else. I’m sure there will be more from the matrix. I’ll add photos after I’ve gotten through the matrix.

This photo shows how close the water level was to the matrix holding fossils.

Update: July 10th. Matrix removed, here is what I brought home. I’m always amazed at the number of Ptychodus teeth in this creek.