I knew after Thursday’s 45 mile ride that the following days–especially the balls of the weekend– would feature less miles due to family commitments and forecasted rain. However that is not to say that the weekend sucked.
Posts Tagged → being a michigander-burgher-ite
Baked & Salted
It’s funny how quickly things change. It seems like only yesterday I was riding my Farley over frozen dirt roads, with five layer, of woolen, wicking, hi-tech, extreme cold weather gear and still freezing my tits off in 1˚ weather. Today I rode 45 miles of pavement and dirt roads (about 65% pavement today) and came home a sweaty, fat piece of salty baked ham in human form. Believe me, that is in NO way complaining, I loved every hot, sweaty, ham-like moment of those 45 miles! I’m just sayin’.
Something Different
No, no, no, the “something different” in the title of this has nothing to do with my ride today. The ride was more of the blessed same. It’s all more to do with the fact that I had started a post about something, but decided to save all that for another day. Today’s ride was merely dirt and paved road miles on the CX bike to try and burn off more blubber.
Planned & Unplanned
Monday was a planned day off the bike to let my sub-par, crap, fat, aging, sagging body recover a bit from the following week’s efforts. It was also a chance to get some things done around the house, do some work on the Superfly and take in B-Man’s spring school concert in the evening. All that was done with an eye towards riding today: unfortunately that didn’t happen.
420 and Counting
As I mentioned during yesterday’s short post, I was able to log another 200 mile week last week. All 200 miles were on local pavement, dirt and gravel roads and all were completed atop my new Trek Boone 5 Disc with a smile on my face (except for the times that I was dealing with a craptastic headwind.
Overcoming The Want To Be Slack
When my alarm went off at 6:05 AM this morning I drug myself out of bed in a manner that suggested I’d been out until 4 AM, pounding Jägerbombs with a gaggle of strippers fresh off their shift and looking for free drinks from a desperate, creepy old dude, rather than home, sober and in bed reading at 9 PM with lights out and sound asleep by 9:30. Maybe I’m growing older faster than I think, or maybe my renewed efforts on the bike are making me crave sleep more than usual… Either way, I had made up my mind to ditch riding today before I even had my first cup of coffee. A decision that was confirmed when I walked upstairs to wake B-Man twenty minutes later and my legs felt like I was carrying a fat dwarf on my back.
Dirt Road Randomness
Today called for a more “normal for me” type of ride: a 35 mile ride north of town that was roughly a 50/50 split of paved and dirt roads. Because it’s late, I’m lazy and in an attempt to avoid this site being a blog that recounts every nuance of even the most mundane of the rides I do (like today’s ride), I will just post a few pics and move on. The three pics pretty much represent a few of the many things that are business as usual when riding in rural Michigan.
Not Completely Stupid
After Saturday’s debacle of a ride where I limped home a bonked, wind hammered, shell of a would-be cyclist, I took Sunday and Monday off the bike. Sunday I went to B’s soccer match, watched footy on TV, drank a few beers and cooked burgers on the grill. Monday I made sure to hydrate, got back to eating good, quality foods and hoped that the bonk I experienced on Saturday was just the result of poor post-ride recovery and Friday night hijinks. I hoped, prayed and fretted that I had not become so fat, slovenly and crap that I could do, 40, 45, 48 and 49.5 mile rides fine, but the mere idea of cresting 50 miles would turn me to a heap of human suck clad in lycra.
A Lesson In Stupidity
I had an excellent ride on Friday and felt good almost the entire 49.3 miles. The only downfall of the ride was popping a spoke and NOT breaking the elusive 50 mile mark. A mark that one time was no big deal to me, but as I become older and fatter has become the benchmark for a “long ride.”
In hindsight, Saturday was pretty good too. But before I get to Saturday’s ride I need to go further into Friday’s post ride, which laid the groundwork for how amazingly bad Saturday would eventually be.
Dirt, Spokes & Disappointment
As previously discussed, this week will not got down amongst the finer ones of the year. But that is all, pretty much, sort of, kinda behind me. The important things is that after four days of nothingness and crap trainer rides, I finally got my cottage cheese-like ass cheeks in the saddle for a ride atop the Boone today .