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’.
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.
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.
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.
Over the past three days I have been blessed with great weather, getting to watch B-Man play soccer and squeezing in some miles on the dirt roads. I have a few good pics and some of my typical not-so-wise words about all that to share, but right now I am caught up in me, eating food, hanging with my family, and having my well-earned weekend beers.
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.
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.
Today I finally broke the fifty mile mark. I know, that’s not even a big deal, but for some reason not “officially” breaking fifty miles for a ride was a thorn in my love handled side for weeks. But I did it today with 51.5 miles. And Christ did I earn it.
This week has been kind of crap, and not just because last week was so freaking awesome! It’s been crap because of the weather (snow, seriously?), not riding outside thus far, annoying, dirt bag student neighbors (who will hopefully be leaving when the semester ends), poor sleep, and varying degrees of self-inflicted, random acts of stupidity from me (of which there were many).
On the brighter side of the week: no one died (yet), I haven’t gained the weight–which I’ve been working hard to lose over the past two weeks–back (yet), Wifey hasn’t left me (yet), B-Man doesn’t hate me (yet), and my various Trek bikes (how did that happen??) were not part of the galaxy wide skewer recall (yet).
Today’s post is yet another post that falls into the lengthy Soiled Chamois sub-category of The Weather is Crap & I Didn’t Ride, But I Wanted to Post Something. Usually these posts end up being about food, crap photos, beer, or people that race bikes way better than me (in that they still race them). However today I figured I would post something that someone out there could actually use. Something that I was going to post over the weekend but got all caught up in the joy of my beer the moment and forgot. It’s to do with the Boone 5’s tire clearance when using a WTB Nano 40 tire (my tire of choice).