Wednesday

I’m not really making any pretense about going to the speed ride these days.  I could easily say that I was watching the weather and figured it wasn’t worth the risk in the rain so I didn’ t go.  But the truth is I had no intention of heading out there, rain or shine.  As it is it was an effort to scrape myself up and ride at all.  I don’t know if I’m overtrained right now or if its just the miserable humid grey weather that’s sapping my motivation.  Ironically, once I start rolling I feel good.  I headed out to do Upper Lime and by the time I got to the stadium I had decided only to do the lower road.  I had the wind at my back on the way out to Bellefonte which gave me a bit more energy.  When I started heading up the hill at Coleville I decided that I wouldn’t feel good about myself if I wimped out on the climb so I headed up the high road and felt reasonably strong on the climb.  At the top, the part that I call the top, which is sort of the third top of that road, I ran into Tig coming the other way and paused to chat about the dog days of July and his ride at Nationals.  Rather than continue on solo, Tig turned around and rode across the top of the ridge and back down with me.  Its funny how someone else changes the ride.  I found myself thinking more about riding smooth, maintaining a consistent tempo, and worrying about my position on the bike.  Its part arrogance I suppose, but having someone else there just makes me take the ride a bit more seriously as well.  There are just some things that you can’t get by training alone.

Yesterday I registered for the state road race on Saturday, and today I’ll have to bite the bullet and shell out the cash to renew my license for 2007.  It’ll be good to race the road bike again, if only to maintain my commitment to multi-disciplinary racing.