Finally, back on the bike….

So, my last blog post and my last ride were way back at the end of February. The reason being that it was on President’s day weekend that I came down with a cough, that turned into a cold, that turned into the flu and ended with me still having a cough….

So, here I am a full 4 weeks later, and although I feel a LOT better, this stupid cough will not go away. Unfortunately I’ve committed to some rides in the near future so I needed to get out on the bike and try to get the legs turning.

Yesterday, the weather broke and although it wasn’t really a “nice” day, it wasn’t raining so I snuck out of work early, actually I left on time but everyone seemed to think I was leaving early, and with the bike in the truck I headed over to Cull Canyon for a couple of laps out and back.

Cull Canyon is nice for a couple of reasons. There’s very little traffic since it’s a dead end and since it’s an out and back, if the weather did turn to crap, I wasn’t that far from the truck.

On the first leg I went pretty hard. Got the heart rate up and kept it there for the entire trip out to the end. It felt good to be on the bike again and although I was coughing and hacking, it helped to blow out the lungs. Coming back, I had a headwind the whole way, which was fine since the route is slightly uphill the whole way out and slightly downhill the whole way back. The wind added to the workout and I concentrated on trying to make circles and keep the rpms high.

The second lap was at a moderate pace. Although I didn’t really slack off, I wasn’t killing myself like I did on the first. I kept a decent pace, made sure my form was good and spun the entire way out only standing and hammering for the one little hill.

It was on this lap that I noticed just how pretty this ride is at this time of year. The hills are beautiful, there are no cars and after almost running into a flock of turkeys and seeing this family of deer, I realized again, just how blessed we are to live in such a nice area.

As usual, I forgot to bring the GPS, but I know the out and back is right about 12-13 miles so I ended up with less than 30 miles total, avoided any rain and got in a great ride. It’s amazing what a good ride will do for my attitude and sense of well being.

Of course it’s pouring again today, so it looks like those will be the only miles I get between now and Saturday when we do the Hell’s Gate 100. And, even though I'm only doing the metric, I'm pretty sure this is gonna hurt….