From today's almost-daily diary entry at www.ChainReaction.com/diary.htm
01/11/04- SERVING UP... ONE UGLY RIDE! I'd been "feeling fat" lately; colder weather does that to
me. Your optional Sunday ride starts to look doubtful as you just don't feel like getting on a
bike is what you really want to do! But fortunately, about the time you realize that's
happening, you know the solution. Whether you feel like it or not, you must get out on a ride.
And it can't just be a normal fun ride... you have to do something ugly.
Think of it as therapy. Something to bring your system back to reality. Something to shock you out
of the doldrums. It's risky, of course, as you could always come away from it thinking that maybe,
just maybe, there's something more to the world than riding a bike. Or it could remind you that the
worst time spent on a bike is better that the best time you could have doing any number of other
things that might occupy a Sunday afternoon.
So at 1:30 I left for one of my least-favorite rides. North on Canada to 92, up 92 and then south on
Skyline. I don't know what it is that makes riding south on Skyline from 92 so unpleasant, but it
seems like one of those grades that's a lot worse than it must actually be... one of those hills
that goes on and on and on, with lots of long straight stretches that never seem to end, and one
that seems impossible to judge where you are relative to the end of the climbing. Maybe it's just
me? But maybe that makes it even more relevant in terms of being an exercise in exorcism! I even got
to use one of my techniques described on our hill-climbing page, the one where, no matter what, you
know it's all over within a certain amount of time. And it was!
Almost exactly one-half hour after heading south from the intersection of 92 & Skyline I found
myself at King's Mtn Road, with a steadily-accelerating pace and an entirely new outlook on life.
The run down to Sky L'onda was fun, and I carried more speed down the west side of 84 than I
expected. Even the first half of the west side of Old LaHonda moved along pretty nicely, and by the
time I got home, 38 miles and just over two hours after I'd left, I was feeling really, really,
really good.
It could have been so different. It could have been a day off the bike, a day spent eating too much
and not accomplishing a whole lot, rationalizing that it's ok to relax on my only day off each week.
It's scary to think how close I came to that, and how much better I feel right now than I would have
had I not ridden.
--Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles chainreactionbicycles.comchainreactionbicycles.comOpen ↗