On the Road Again… Sort of…
I woke up this morning to blue skies. I’d heard all sorts of wind warnings for today, so I wanted to get a ride in before it started to blow, so off I went. Riding alone again, typical. This time, I decided to try riding without my knee brace and to do the same ride with 5 extra miles tacted on at the end. First 4-5 miles, my knee felt a little unstable and tingled with worried me abit. But after about 4 miles, it felt okay. I got off to stretch and to make sure that there was no pain, and kept going. Iced 2x today after the ride, and am hoping to have no pain tomorrow morning. I think there was some kind of a ride going on today because I saw a LOT of cyclists in similar outfits spread out along my route. I even thought I saw someone that looked just like Lance Armstrong riding alone. I wanted to take a double take, but was riding downhill fast with traffic but couldn’t. I managed to eat only 2 nats (yuk!), saw about 5 squirrels, 1 blue bird, 1 brown bird, 2 road kills, and got home safe and sound. I feel like I’d gotten stronger than last week, but heh. Could be my imagination. Oh, and my heart monitor strap! GAWD! The Garmin showed 50-75 BPM all the way throughout the ride. UGH! Something wrong with that thing! I adjusted the strap several times to try to get a correct reading, but no luck. Oh well… At least I finished riding without a scratch or (hopefully) no additional injuries. I will go for 45 or 50 next time if my knee is feeling good tomorrow. But I’ve been ordered by RL to “STAY OFF” to give my knee time to recover, so I will need to wait a few more days for recovery.
I love cycling. I wish I could ride more. It gives me time to think, time to reflect on things in my life, what I enjoy and why I enjoy them, and what I’m looking for in the future. Today I realized that people are always searching. Well, at least in my case, I feel like I’m always searching for something. No duh, right? I don’t know what I’m searching for, but I guess I’ll know when I find it. Last night, I had dinner with an old ex-boyfriend from more than 5 years ago. He was my best friend back then for 3 years. When we were together, I remember feeling that we were so alike and that we were meant for each other. But when I saw him again and started talking about life, work, and things that we enjoy and mattered, I realized how different we had become, or I had become. He was still the same as I remember. But I guess I’ve changed quite a bit. It’s obvious that the environment and the people who we surround ourselves with have a lot to do with who we become or want to become. I guess that’s the question I want to try to answer during my rides of many miles. It’s probably one of the reasons why I love cycling. Unlike the other sports I do such as paragliding or kitesurfing where I need to focus on what I need to do next in order to stay safe, land safely, and enjoy the adrenaline from what I’m doing (at least for me) , cycling gives me a sense of peace and quietness where I can simply enjoy the solitude of just pedaling and thinking. It gives me a chance to reduce “the noises” (as someone special to me put it) in my head to find some clarity. This is what I’ve been missing for the last few weeks that I haven’t been able to ride. I’m looking forward to next month when I can go full force on my bike and start doing the hills again. Hoping to ride the Solvang century… in under 7 hours? 6.5 hours? Will it be possible? Ambitious, yes. But we shall see…
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