On the Road Again

After a much-needed burst of working out my situation in writing the past couple of weeks, I’m ready to get back on the Monday-update schedule. I made it through the first few days of hole-sucking emotional detox, and I’m happy to say that I’m feeling a lot more normal now. I’ve got in a solid week of 100% home cooked food, pretty decent sleep, and lots of boyfriend and kitty cuddles. Oh, and the ~100 miles that logged on my new bike didn’t hurt, either.

At least the roads were clear.

When I got the report around noon on Tuesday that my new bike still hadn’t arrived at the shop, I thought there was no way it would be ready to ride on my day off on Wednesday. The plan was to ride around 1:30 when Frank got out of class, but he called me at 11:45 and said my bike had not only arrived, but that it was ready to pick up. When I got to the shop, they had not switched out the crank yet, so it was not actually ready. We had them swap out the Rotor crank that it came with to a regular Ultegra one, so that I can add a Stages power meter in another month or two when I save up the additional funds. Unfortunately, after I made several slow meanders around the shop waiting, they said that they were missing a part to swap the cranks and they wouldn’t have it until the next day. I was pretty upset about all of the back and forth for a week already and started to lose my cool. I went home and started preparing to ride my old bike when Frank got home. When he arrived and called the shop, it turned out they had found what they needed, and he went to get the bike.

We had to scramble to get tires swapped, bottle cages, saddle, pedals, etc. on so that we could ride, but we eventually got out the door about an hour later than planned, just in time for the 40 degrees and sunny weather to turn cloudy and the temperature to drop. In the end, though, I was still pretty stoked to finally be riding outside in above-freezing weather with no precipitation and to be on my new bike. I had no idea how out of shape I really was, and after 2.5 hours of gasping and my heart rate going through the roof, all of the drama of the past week had melted away. I also thought it was just as well be got a late start and had to cut down our ride, because 30 miles and 2500 feet of climbing were plenty.

After taking a day off mid-week to sneak in an above-freezing ride, the weekend turned out surprisingly okay weatherwise, as well. We logged a very climby 40 miles on Saturday and a very dead-legged, rolly 26 on Sunday. I’m still really weak and slow right now, so I’m still glad to have the Death March pressure off, but I’m feeling good about the work that I’ve put in. Hopefully, I’ll still have my legs and lungs back in time for the spring thaw.