The past few days have been filled with random rides that featured varying degrees of misfortunes, aches, issues and minor successes, like forgetting to charge my Garmin 500 for weeks and having it die before I even made it to the dirt roads on Friday. If you do a ride and there’s nothing to record it, did it really happen? I’m joking of course, and in my case my ride, the stats are best left unknown.
Back be damned! Back also be rubbed, iced, heated, stretched, rolled, medicated, electronically stimulated and cussed to hell. Things are slowly getting better in the back department, at least on the bike.
I hadn’t planned on riding today, but I started putzing around making adjustments to my cleats and riding position, attempting to relieve my ongoing lower back issues and decided I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow to find out if I am heading in the right direction. So I did a short and sweet-ish 10 mile singletrack loop.
I got out on the bike for the fourth day in a row today. Starting to see some progress in the back pain area. Raising the seat post was a good move, plus I noticed a slight difference in cleat for/aft placement between my left and right shoes. The left was about an 1/8″ back. This might be playing into my imbalance issues. We’ll see, I fixed that this evening, so I will have to do more “testing” this week. I suppose there are worst places to be “testing” out new positions. The woods are coming alive and the ferns are starting to blossom. Soon the entire forest floor will be covered with them. I love that.
This weekend has contained a variety of riding. Some of it was good, some of it was bad and some of it was outstanding. The bad were my two mountain bike rides, I could go in to how frustrated I am and how shitty I feel on the bike right now, but I won’t. Partly because I don’t have time and partly because I may have narrowed it down to the saddle height on the Superfly being a bit lower than it should be. That still doesn’t take away from the fact that my back is a mess and my hip flexor continues to make a lovely popping sound when my leg is rotated. But I am still hopeful that I can get my knots worked out soon and my position on the Superfly re-dialed in.
Yesterday was all about getting some longish Weekday Ride road miles in. Today was all about doing an easy ride out on the dirt roads for an hour and a half in the wind and seeing how the Clement X’Plor USH 700 x 35 tires I bought WAY back in January, and finally installed this week, rolled.
Ride Part I, the part where I reckon I was faster than last week for no reason whatsoever.
Last week I took my road bike out for the first time in 2014. I had written that I felt swell during the 41 mile ride but was sort of pissed to come home and check my files (which serve no real purposed to a schlep like me) and see that I was over ten minutes slower than my best effort last year. Thankfully things got a tad better today, even with a slightly gimpy-ish neck and back.
Jake (the dog) never waits too long at the door before he’s back in the house to do what Jake (the dog) does best: sleep, fart, snore, eat, burp and sleep some more more before going back out to take a dump. And I did’t wait too long after Sunday’s blunderful crash to get back at trying to burn off the fleshy kegs attached to all sides of my torso. However, I did wait longer than I thought I would have to.
I woke up at 7 this morning to the sound of more rain pelting the windows. So, I rolled over and went back to sleep. An hour later the rain was slowing down, so I forced myself out of bed and downstairs to drink some coffee, watch some sub-par football and make sure Jake (the dog) didn’t shit the house.
As I ushered Jake off the porch I cursed the continued rain and chilly temps and conceded that I would most likely end up on the trainer today. Shit.
After a match and half of football, breakfast, about 200 ounces of coffee and multiple colon evacuations, I got caught up reading some stuff about the Giro online (maybe the greatest stage race of all time). Rain be damned, I was going for a ride!
I checked the radar (it looked like I would be OK), hurriedly got my gear together, kitted up and grabbed my cross bike. I would be road riding but my road bike is still on the trainer with a nasty ass, ever balding rear tire, so the Jake would have to do. I took off down the road and I just didn’t feel right on the bike. I pedaled to the edge of town and realized my saddle was a bit too low. Shit.
After a long, long, LONG Michigan winter, it has been nice to get back to “normal” weekends. By “normal” I of course mean weekends that have way more riding than staring out of windows cursing the snow and ice.
