We went for a bike ride today, which was nice. It was bright and sunny and that was nice. It was warm. It was hot, but not ridiculously, oppressively hot, which was nice. We rode over to campus to go up and down one of the hills over and over. And I won the day’s hill set, which was nice.
Here I am at the bottom after my last hill repeat and waiting on The Yankee to finish her last two rounds.
The actual hill disappears and wraps up to the right. So it doesn’t look like the biggest hill in the world, because its not, nor does it need to be. We’re just doing two minutes of consistent climbing right now. Also, to be fair, I only won because she pulled off to set up a camera shot and somehow that let me get well ahead of the game.
Across from our hill repeats there is a smaller hill — a nice single roller, really. It’s on a road that splits the softball and baseball fields from the tennis courts and the football field parking lots. After a softball game there last year I saw three guys fly over that hill on their bikes and thought, I can do that. So now when I am over there, I do that.
And today I went over it at in my next-to-hardest gear with ease and at a respectable speed. Well, I thought. Because my inner-monologue often features sentences without subjects or verbs and only interjections. So I went back around again, through a parking lot time trial segment, hanging a right and then weaving through some road construction barrels and then working back into the hard end of the cassette right away, turning left and hitting that roller one more time, in my smallest gear. And then I stood up. And I went over the hill.
I went over the hill slightly slower than I had just the time before. I could see it on the Garmin, right there in front of me.
And there’s a lesson in there somewhere.
The next hill after that was the first one on our way back to the house and it was the hardest hill on the route. Maybe we should do repeats on that one. (Let’s not. No one tell her that I even mentioned that.) Then you weave through the rest of the campus and the little side roads that get you back to where you want to be. It’s an easy ride because the hills you dread are out of the way. Sure there are some repeats in your legs, and those always feel and seem so slow, because I’m slow, but the rest of up and downs after that have some real flow.
And there’s a lesson in there somewhere, too.
Hey, did you see this yesterday? That interview played right into my hands, timing-wise, didn’t it?
WHO is acknowledging "emerging evidence" of airborne transmission of #coronavirus. @FSPH_IUPUI epidemiologist Shandy Dearth says that's an even bigger reason to avoid crowds.https://t.co/XA8vhL01G9@IUPUI @IUBloomington @IndianaUniv @IUBProvost @IUImpact @IUMediaSchool
— On Topic with IU (@OnTopicWithIU) July 8, 2020
The 2008 Paris-Roubaix, the HELL OF THE NORTH, is on @NBCSN right now and, as ever, I am irrationally excited about watching people riding over pavé. https://t.co/45UuiBBQHt
— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith) July 9, 2020
What’s not to love about this? And, sure, this is a 43-minute video, but it’s a tight recap and all the action is in the first 28 minutes.
Plus it features a finish between two of the great Classics riders of the modern age and what else do you have going on tonight, anyway?
