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I Want To Ride My Bicycle

Yesterday was my first outside ride of 2011. True cyclists will find that ridiculous, as there has been ample opportunity to get outside before now. Just not for me.


I’m a ideal-weather cyclist. Criteria for riding outside includes: sunny with no chance of rain, winds less than 15 miles per hour, a location of either the downtown airport or country roads and the time of day must be low traffic. That leaves me with approximately eight hours of outdoor riding time per year.


They say cyclists fall into two categories – those who have wrecked and those who are going to. I’ve only had one minor incident, which was hitting a road-closed sign because I wasn’t paying attention. (It’s easy to space out riding 80 miles on a 3.7-mile loop.) Fortunately, the injuries were minor. So that means the big wreck is still looming. This fear leads me to riding indoors on the trainer more often than not.


Boyfriend, who is more cyclist than triathlete, finds this absurd. He does a ride self-named “Urban Attack", which includes high traffic downtown roads. No, thank you.


Anyway, last night was 25 miles in moderate wind. Nothing too difficult, though I was super tired afterwards. I rode harder than I should have being my first time out because I hate being passed on the loop. (Not that I didn’t get passed, I just hate it.) I did spend some time reeling in a dude riding while wearing compression socks and that made me strangely happy. And the two cheese enchiladas post-ride made me even happier.

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