Bike Love

Yesterday I spent almost 4 glorious hours riding my bike along the NorCal coast and along the entire ride, thoughts like this were constantly streaming through my mind:

• I am SOOOOO happy! 
•  I LOVE my bike
• Seriously, I can’t believe this is my life
• It is soooo pretty!

Somewhere between Half Moon Bay and Santa Cruz.

These thoughts were basically on a constant loop and it made me think back to the time that I had all but sworn off riding a bike.  Growing up as a runner, I always had the desire to try my hand at triathlons…but I absolutely hated cycling.  Why did I hate cycling, you ask?  Well I hated cycling because of a VERY ill-fated bike ride that we took as a family while visiting Colorado when I was 12.

My mom had always loved bike riding…nothing serious or competitive, but she loved taking family rides for mother’s day, her birthday, when we went camping, etc.  Up until that Colorado trip, I was pretty indifferent towards cycling…I always had fun when we went, but I was never jonesing to go.

In 1996, between 7^th and 8^th grade, we took a road trip to Colorado to visit my brother and sister-in-law who were living in Denver.  We had a condo up in the mountains (at Lake Dillon, between Keystone and Breckenridge Ski Resorts) for the week and luckily for mom, there was a long flat bike trail all the way around the Lake.  Obviously this was planned as a day’s excursion.

My brother and sister-in-law joined us, so we had a group of 5 rolling along.  The ride started out pretty uneventfully.  We rode the bike trail at a leisurely pace, stopped for lunch, took a few breaks to go down by the lake.  After riding for quite a while (the loop was about 17 miles – per my estimate on ridewithgps.com), we had made it almost all the way around the lake…seriously, only about 3-4 miles to go, when we made the next turn per mom’s directions.

Yep...(not so) GIANT hill.  Kinda want to go back and conquer it now!

Well, the turn took us to a two lane mountain road that basically went straight uphill.  To my 12 year old mind, that looked AWFUL.  (Looking at the elevation map today, it’s totally doable and way easier than most of my training rides, but back then…no way!) On a little 10 speed bike, with the tiniest “bike lane”/shoulder imaginable, and semi-trucks travelling between the ski resorts?!?  At that point, I wasn’t going to turn around and ride another 13 miles to get back to the condo, so I had no choice but to make it up and over the 1.5 mile hill.  It was hard, scary, and pretty miserable.  When I finally made it to the top, I vowed to my mom that I would NEVER go bike riding again!  And I stuck to that until December 2012 when I committed to making 2013 my triathlon year.

My adventure buddy Penny in her element.

Nearly 20 years later (wow I feel old typing that!!), however, those horrible feelings associated with the bike are completely erased.  They’ve been replaced by feelings of freedom, adventure, and accomplishment and are absolutely irreplaceable!  My new adventures with Penny the P3 have been nothing short of amazing and I love searching for new routes to explore.  It’s crazy how different the view is when you’re on two wheels instead of four.

Random thoughts:

• Even when riding with a group, you spend lots of time in your own head when on a bike.  I’ve decided that a wonderful invention would be a twitter feed that connects directly to your thoughts.  I have lots of 140 character nuggets of gold when I’m chugging along, but by the time I’m off the bike, I’ve forgotten half of them or they’ve lost their relevance.  Seeing my biking stream of consciousness would be fascinating…
• When I’m running or cycling, I’ll often find myself counting steps or pedal strokes.  But I rarely start at 1…I have no idea what number I start at, but I’ll find myself in the 50s or 70s out of nowhere!  Does this happen to anyone else??
• "Salty Balls" are bomb-diggity!  After getting tired of sweet stuff during the Oceanside bike leg, I decided to test out something not so sweet...created by Osmo Mastermind Stacy Sims.  SO yummy and a perfect balance with my super sweet Clif Block gummies.  The recipe calls for Brown Rice Syurp - note to self, just go straight to Whole Foods.  I think I went to 3 grocery stores before making the trek to WF (and I totally knew that the other stores wouldn't have it!)
• I met with coach last Weds to chat about Oceanside, pros/cons, lessons learned, etc. and to discuss the rest of the season.  I absolutely loved racing 70.3 miles (and my goal is complete Ironman Arizona next fall), so I’ve added a third 70.3 to the season...the Inaugural Challenge Rancho Cordova on October 5th!  It’s the same weekend as the Portland Marathon was, so in my attempts to qualify for Boston in 2016, I’ll be revisiting CIM on December 7^th!

Happy Monday

#makeithappen