After adulting most of the day on Tuesday, I was anxious to re-enter the world of underemployed slack on Wednesday with a Standard Gravel™ Ride from the Cul-De-Sac-Shack.
The ride was a short 22.5-mile loop and was pretty “meh.” It wasn’t bad in any way; it was just as the name implies, “standard.” And these days, as I look to regain some shred of fitness, I’ll take feeling good after a quick dirt road ride all day long.
My Monday was filled with all the business that Monday brings, so I was confined to the Dreadmill™ for 3 miles of lumbering and sweating my ass off to the latest techno “hits” featuring “a good beat that you can dance to,” all the while trying not to fall off the damn thing to become another sad A.A.R.P. treadmill statistic.
I was up at 6:15 AM on Friday to embrace whatever fresh hell moderate inconveniences the day might throw at me. It’s been raining for like three days straight, and when it’s not raining, it’s gloomy as fuck as if it were raining. So it took a few extra guzzles of coffee and the promise of sunshine later in the day to finally convince me to start thinking about possibly leaving the house to ride my bike.
WEDNESDAY 7:53 AM
I’ve been up since 6:30 AM, which is pretty normal since I usually go to bed by 9 PM these days. Oddly, it’s dark as night with threatening clouds leftover from last night’s thunderstorms, and I have a feeling it’s going to be like this for most of the day.
Given the rain overnight, I’ll be keeping my Roscoe and its new 29er wheels with low-profile Kenda rubber out of the mud and in the garage1. Instead, I’ve developed a plan to tackle 2 to 3 laps of the Bundy Hill Preserve, hopefully without being struck by lightning.
Not to sound like a broken record, but allow me to apologize for the previous post. The stomachal mayhem that I dealt with for four days was not particularly good blog fodder. I want to say it will never happen again, but you and I both know that it will.
Wednesday, I needed to shoot over to the local lab to get some bloodwork done, and then it was home to the savory arms of a 225 calorie Soiled Egg Sammich2 before getting into some kit, looking at myself in the mirror, thinking about taking the kit off and downing a bottle of gin, aborting that boozy plan for some reason, and then going for a short 20-mile dirt road ride that hurt like it was 120.
Sunday brought a reprieve from five days of heavy rain and thunderstorms. I had no real plans for the day, but in the late morning, I decided to do a quick walk around the Sylvan Preserve with my macro lens. Wifey tagged along to get some real exercise while I took photos, and then we met up for a bit somewhere in the middle of the trails to finish out the walk.
In my last post, I rode my bike. Since then, I have been limited to one short trainer session and some random hikes when time allowed.
It’s become clear to me, via my bathroom scale, that my self-imposed extended layoff from riding has not helped (in ANY way whatsoever) my attempt at getting back to being a “husky” man who is a whisker under being morbidly obese. No offense to my fellow “husky” and “morbidly obese” friends and neighbors. “For there are many,” sayeth Luke. Luke, the dude that hangs out at the skatepark, not Luke of the Bible book.
After a week or more of feeling like a mental shit show, I woke up Thursday morning feeling unusually refreshed and even more unusually inspired to ride my bike.