When my New Jersey friends left town, tour guiding came to an end. This brought me back to riding with an additional purpose: getting back in shape to race nationals this summer. I can not bring myself to call it training. After 25 years of racing, burning out and taking a 5 year break, I am just going to think of it as riding with more intensity. Well, I am going to at least try to ride with more intensity, and probably only when I feel like it. I know this may sound lame, and I do not think anyone should follow my practices. From experience, I have found that too much discipline 30 years into this, may not be best practice for me. I need to enjoy what I am doing. Many people enjoy training, I do not anymore.
I have been riding with my friends who live out here that are in very good shape and surprisingly, I have been feeling pretty good trying to keep up. When my legs get tired, I switch to a higher cadence and let my lungs do the work. I used to do this way back to prepare me for racing in spring. It seems to be working so far. We'll see how that goes the next month or so.
Yesterday's ride was awesome. The clouds were amazing, which made for great pictures! Flowers are popping and I expect the brittle bush will come in more and make for an amazing spring bloom. My friend Brenda took the picture of me. Not only can she ride, but she takes awesome pictures. She happens to love flowers too.
It felt great to push and get challenged while having fun.