I'm back, baby

(There's a typical "only you, Wedgie" moment at the end of this post, so stick around.)

On the bike, I am disproportionately good at climbing. That's not to say that I'm great at hills, but if you watched me lagging behind the group on the flats and riding my brakes on the downhills, you probably wouldn't expect much out of me going up. Yet for whatever Bizarro World reason, I make up time on the climbs.

Of course, I haven't done any hills recently. The incline in my living room on the trainer was too much for me for a while. But tonight I decided I was going to test my injured knee a bit. I decided to do a brick where I would Visit Mr. Griffith and then do a 3 mile run. Mr. Griffith's course is just a 6-mile loop with a short but decent climb in the middle. Well let me tell you, I FLEW up that mofo. That's right, you heard me. I raced back down the other side (well, racing as much as you can while squeezing your brakes) and did the run at a decent pace without incident.

There is still some pressure on my knee, so I have to be careful. And doing a 6-mile ride and 3-mile run is hardly the kind of training I should be doing to prepare for a half-ironman. But for the first time in 3 weeks, I wasn't dreading this weekend's race. (It's still gonna be awful.)

Now for the Wedgie Moment: I am really slow with transitions, so last night I tried to speed thing up a bit. After my ride, I quickly took off the front wheel and threw the bike in the trunk, slipped on my sneakers and started running. Not bad. I ran for a half hour or so, got back to the car and had some water and did some stretching. Then I noticed, leaning against my car, my front bike wheel. My much-admired, kinda pricey Flash-Point wheel. Left out in the open. Untouched. Maybe it's my naive innocence, or maybe there aren't as many bad people in the world as we fear.