It is funny how you can have different emotional responses to the same thing. It doesn’t even take much to change things, either. I got home Monday, ready to ride my bike. Had to ride my bicycle. Couldn’t get out of the door again fast enough.
I didn’t ride yesterday because I couldn’t drag myself away from the pillow early enough. I was in the studio until dark, so that wiped out that day, which is fine.
But that meant an evening ride tonight! Which was great! I was happy to do it, and I had a nice ride after my legs started moving. But it didn’t have the same level of zeal as two days before. I did the same roads and same kind of roads. The weather was warm and grand on both days. So what makes the difference?
Anyway, this was me when I set out for a quick evening ride:
We’ve been doing a lot of small ring workouts lately, because you can always improve cardio, they say. (This is a terrible thing to say, for several reasons.)
Not pictured was about eight miles in when a guy on a bike came screaming by and tossed two syllables at me, his air at a premium. (He should do more cardio.) I said something almost as intelligible, ground mostly in the problem that I had no idea what he was trying to tell me. And then I looked over my shoulder and there was a whole angry pack of young riders. Fit, young, in their big rings, going fast. And suddenly I was swallowed up. And they pretty quickly spit me out the back.
So there I was, all alone, enjoying the sun and shade and little hills and quiet of an almost-country road, reminded that I really much prefer small or solo rides to big group efforts. There’s just not enough courtesy or regard for safety in packs.
If I’d been in the right gearing, though, I could have stayed in the group and hated it for a few more seconds, of that I’m sure. But, instead, I got 43 kilometers of good cardio work this evening.
(I’m supposed to use km, I know, when it comes to riding, but I haven’t memorized the conversions or the formula and it sounds awfully pretentious. Though the numbers are always higher … It was 27 miles and change tonight, and my top speed would have been 47 km/hour. So maybe it isn’t that pretentious.)
On the way back to the house:
Do you know how many times you have to see that before you realize the perfect shot will always be perfect right there? Three. At least three times I’ve been through there and thought, Oh, what a great place for a sunset shot. I should get one of those one day before I can’t. And then I finally realized it was an east-west road and that should be a fairly predictable photograph.
I blame the cardio training for lack of directional cognition and thought processing.
So, that covers my bike ride and today’s Instagram offerings. If you haven’t been on Twitter, there’s a bunch more there today. A lot of sports, somehow, in fact. Please do give me a visit there as well. Thanks for stopping in, and come back tomorrow for another adorable picture of the black cat and probably another thing or two of passing interest. It’ll be the regular iffy Thursday smorgasbord, and you’re always invited.
