Sunday, May 05, 2013

Back in the saddle

I went my first bike ride since... well, it's been a long time. I was trying to come up with excuses not to go: Los Angeles is on fire so the air quality is bad. I have a mountainous 10K tomorrow and I need to rest my legs. But I can ALWAYS find a reason not to do a ride and I need to break the habit so I went. The ride was hosted by Velo Studio, the bike shop about 2 blocks from my work. It was basically a ride to the river trail and back through Griffith Park, 24 miles.

At one point I think the ridemaster kind of yelled at me. I was pretty much chatting with Robert the entire first half of the ride, so we were bringing up the rear where it was easier to ride side-by-side. The I stopped to answer a phone call: it was AT&T, something about how I didn't "pay my bill" and they were going to "cancel my service". Seriously? They interrupted my ride for that nonsense? Anyway, as I was rejoining the group, the ride-nazi came back and told me "let's try to stay together." And I was thinking, "do you have any idea who I am? I'm WEDGIE!" I think he thought I was a newbie because he kept offering me lots of encouragement and very basic pointers.

He may have been closer to the mark than I care to admit. We did the standard Griffith Park hill climb on the way back, and I have to say- it was a little tough. In my defense, I had just run up that same hill last night at a decent pace and my legs were a little tight but still; I'm definitely behind where I need to be. And the bugs - probably the nastiest gnatiest day I've ever been out riding. They were swarming all over us. Awful.

Overall, a pleasant enough ride. There's a 70-mile L.A. River ride next month so I have to get my mileage back up pretty quickly but at least I'm starting.