| | Today I let my neighbor talk me into leaving to go for a bike ride at 5:30am. He was sure it was going to be "light enough to ride". One thing about type "A" personality types is they are optimistic-often misguided-but optimistic! We rolled out a few minutes after 5:30am into the darkness. On the positive side, there was zero traffic and the weather was about 70 degrees. After a few miles of riding in the dark and hoping not to hit potholes or small animals we met up with two of his friends. The four of us took off toward the rural roads of of Pickens County, SC. It was still dark.
We started climbing the first hill and I got out of breath pretty quickly. I wasn't really warmed up and it was a good, long climb, but still. Then it hit me, it was close to 100% humidity. We had a little bit of fun at my neighbors expense for wanting to be on the road so early, but it wasn't bad at all, really. Before too long it was light out, and we had gotten away from any possible traffic problems of suburbia. It was just the four of us, some very cool roads, great climbs with great views....... and unleashed, unchained dogs about every two miles. The dogs didn't end up causing any problems, just a few spikes in our heart rates.
I hadn't ridden the day before, and the day before that I had gone mostly easy for about 35 miles on the road bike. So I was really ready for this ride. I hot all the hills pretty hard, many of them getting up out of the saddle and powering up and over. Of course, several of them were way too long stand up the whole time. I went hard enough that I gave myself time to recover a little before the other guys got there. They are strong riders, and I never had to wait long.
When the clock stuck 9:00am we were still 8-10 miles from home, but we had already put in a full days work. We had climbed up mountains, rode through valleys and been chased by dogs to the tune of about 4000 calories. The whole thing got me to thinking about the old Army commercial. I was pretty happy about things. By the time we got back it was 9:30am and I had done of the best rides I had done in weeks. Sweet. Don't tell my neighbor, but I really glad we did it like we did it....
|
| | Posted 6/13/2009 10:49 PM - 12 Views - 2 eProps - 2 comments
- recommend
  - recs0
- share
- email
 - sent0
|
