cycling

cycling / Thursday / Twitter / video — Comments Off on Sometimes it is easier to sit than to do
17
Aug 17

Sometimes it is easier to sit than to do

This is a video I shot last weekend. We were at the Olympic Distance Triathlon National Championship where The Yankee was racing. She was out on her bike at the time, which gave me a few minutes to sit and enjoy the nice weather and the shade. Those are two things, I think, we don’t do often enough.

So there I sat and I looked up and this was above me and I decided to make a video. I’d intended it to be a meditative thing for the front page because sitting under a shade tree and watching the sunlight blink through it. That’s one of the most relaxing things I can think of doing, roughly ever. When I sat down to edit the video last night I found that the file size was just too large. But I really liked the video. Fortunately, in this age of wonders, there are more places than just the front page of your website where things like this can go. So it is going here:

There, isn’t that better?

Well, it was, except for this:

cycling / Monday / photo / running — Comments Off on Hello leg muscles
31
Jul 17

Hello leg muscles

I went for my first bike ride in a while on Saturday. It was hard in the way that the usual becomes hard after too much time off. I’d been fighting off a mild respiratory or sinus thing for a bit and then a separate throat thing and we were in a hot spell and I didn’t have to ride, so I didn’t. But, I thought Saturday, maybe I should have anyway.

And then yesterday afternoon I returned to the untied sneaker exercises:

It had been three or four weeks since my last ride and a great deal longer since my last run. And that wasn’t easy, either. It wasn’t hard so much as slow and full of the usual aches and pains you forget about in the early part of a run. But the weather was nice and the scenery was lovely:

If you run slow, you see it longer, that’s what I always say:

I say that a lot, because I’m slow. And my run was slow, but today, my walk might have been just a touch slower, too.

cycling / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off on Mondays never have clever post titles
15
May 17

Mondays never have clever post titles

The best restive kind of weekend. Slept in and and then did only what I wanted to do on Saturday. This included turning on lights seldom used and in random combinations throughout the evening. Also, I cleaned out the leftovers from the refrigerator. To most people this means dragging the garbage can over and doing the transfer of goods routine. Or the Transfer of Foodstuffs That Were Once Good and No Longer Are routine.

Me, I just ate them. Two dishes from last week that made their way into the fridge were lunch and dinner on Saturday. Then I cleaned my office.

Sunday, I made the mother’s day calls, went to the grocery store, watched a bike race and road my bicycle.

I made several passes on that deer, so I got plenty of fuzzy photos:

deer

Also, nearby, was a rabbit:

rabbit

Maybe they’ll both come over and help with the next set of leftovers.

Today, back to the office, where things are taking place and some work is getting down and meetings are being held. Then home and, while walking to the car, I saw another rabbit:

rabbit

I’m guessing it was a different rabbit. It could be the same one. The two sightings were only about a mile or so apart. I don’t know why that first rabbit would need to hop this direction, but it is possible. (Not pictured, another rabbit, which was hiding in the shrubbery.)

And then another bike ride. I did an hour in a low gear, mashing and lifting the pedals as quickly as I can, on the flattest course I could find, where I still managed to gain 503 feet over 16 miles. But I held my highest pace of the year so far. That deserves a handlebar shot:

trail

And another ride tomorrow.

cycling / photo / Thursday — Comments Off on Oh no, we have slowed because H20 has flowed
11
May 17

Oh no, we have slowed because H20 has flowed

On tonight’s group ride we went slowly. One of the fastest guys in town was there, but he was in a chatty mood. And various other people were only interested in seeing standing moisture on the road and stopping for it almost entirely, as if the gathering of three molecules in a specific formulation in the smallest of volumes could harm their bicycles.

We stopped a lot. Four times in a 24-mile ride. That’s barely enough to get and keep the heart rate where you might like it. These were flowers I found at the first stop, after just six miles of riding:

flowers

Those four stops took place because this is a no-drop group, which means there are plenty of chances to regroup. Or stop and wait, depending on where you are in the scheme of things. The four stops we counted do not include a fifth stop.

Topping the biggest climb of the day, a long and slow 330 feet or so that has hurt me each of the few times I’ve done it, one of the riders in the group had an accident a bit ahead of me. When I got to the top of the hill there were already two cars stopped and someone said a rider had been hit, which sends a chill. But it seems a dog ran out in front of the rider and she took a tumble. Fortunately, she was OK. And fortunately one of the riders was a physician, and one of the people that stopped was a paramedic. After a few minutes, some Neosporin and a few small bandages, she pronounced herself OK, got up and we all rode off down the hill.

The larger group made one last stop, but we skipped it. We were close to darkness, because all of these stops had made a 24-mile ride into nearly two hours. It was damp and chilly and a tiny bit frustrating. I think I am coming to form my opinion on group rides.

On the way back to the house we have to pass over a creek, which was almost ready to to threaten the high banks after more than a week of rain:

flooding creek

All of the water here is swiftly moving, which is more than we can say about our ride this evening.

adventures / cycling / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off on Keeping up
9
May 17

Keeping up

Tonight I had the chance to enjoy my first group ride of the year. The group has been going out probably for a month or two now, but I’m hanging out with the students on Tuesdays and Thursdays while the cyclists are out riding around. But with the summer upon us, my Tuesday and Thursday evenings are free and I can ride. So there I was, sitting in the office considering with dread a route I’ve been on before, thinking of how poorly I’ve ridden it the last two times out and wondering how today could be any different.

We got to the parking lot of the giant church where the group meets and there are 17 or 18 people and we all set off on this little 25-mile course. I think I was the third wheel at the beginning, which basically just means I pushed off from the parking lot early. So there was Kyle, who is in IT at the university, and then The Yankee and then me and behind us a bunch of other interesting and talented people. And after a bit The Yankee passed Kyle and I went with her and some people latch on to my wheel and we just go. She’s crushing rollers in the 20s and I’m not even using any of my gears. I’d put my chain on one of the harder gears and it stayed there for the first eight miles, until we got to a real hill. My legs, which had felt tired all day, came alive and I’m sitting just off to The Yankee’s side and she’s leading the whole group. My heart rate is up a little and the breathing is up a tiny bit and I’m singing. I’m singing while I’m riding and just trying to hang on to the leader of the pack.

And she was so strong on her bike today that if you slowed up to take one picture — or to get a swig of water, or to glance at your gears — you’d spend the next two miles working hard just to catch her again. So this was the one photo I took:

ride

There were never more than two or three people ahead of us, the real climbers of the bunch put us in our place on the hills, which we are still learning how to deal with. But we were bombing the downhill runs into the low 40s with ease, and then riding that momentum until we’d get to the next uphill.

It was my first “fast” ride of the year. The sort where you are a bit silly with the speed and delirious about how your legs are moving up and down. It was positively average, really, but I’m taking it.

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