15 Miles from Home

[ishte]

I have a very thick horrible 3 mile wall. It's incredibly hard to break through right now. It's like riding through marshmallow sauce or something. Here's how it works. When I first get on the bike, I'm happy. Then I get to 3 miles and all I want to do is get off. Thankfully even if I do that, by the time I get back, I'm past the wall (usually by about 4 miles) and ready to go on. Unfortunately when I'm by myself, I usually don't. When I'm with someone though, I usually get the encouragement I need to push through it and move forward.

Today, my good friend and I started out at Eastwood Park on the Number 2 "Creekside Trail" and headed East toward the Bicycle Capital of the Midwest, Xenia (Also known as the land of the giant F5 Tornado). Now the way to Xenia the first three or four miles are on a slight incline, so it's hard work when you're trying to pedal through a wall of heavy peanut butter or something. But with encouragement, (And being passed by a long slender fellow in yellow with a handsome smile, some killer calves which I wished I could keep up with) I got through it and we went on to the 5th/3rd Gateway Park & Ride that is just past I-675. This is about 6 miles out from Eastwood. Probably about halfway to Xenia and we generally stop here for rest, and often start here as well. As expected, we stopped there for fresh water and a break to allow our balls and not balls (i.e. saddle area) become un-numbed and shake out a little bit. We admired a couple of people's bikes and shot the breeze with another group of cyclists for a few minutes and then decided to head back. The trip back is easier, and the pace faster, because the last three or four miles are of course DOWNhill slightly.

By the time we got back to Eastwood, we decided that though it was clouding up and occasionally we were feeling a droplet, we were game for just a little bit more, so we headed in the opposite direction from there towards Dayton and the River Corridor. We only went out maybe two miles that way, because the trail is not as well maintained. The river stinks this time of year and there is just too much damned goose shite. That and it's also a wind tunnel. So we went down it until we'd found a place that had been under water and hadn't been cleaned up and turned around.

By the end of the ride, I showed 15.1 miles on my tripometer, with an average ride speed of 12.4 mph. Not bad for a first shakeout trip, but boy I sure can tell that I've been ill and am not up to where I usually am this time of year. If I want to do any sort of event this year, I'm going to have to do some serious work to get back into shape. I'd definitely like to ride my bike to work some this year. Last year it just wasn't possible. The weather was too faulty, most of the year it was cold and rainy, and I could almost never count on it to stay clear for a full 8 hour stretch. For now, I'm hitting the shower.