Riding with the Big Girls

Thanks, everybody, for being so supportive of my marathon. You really are the best!

Sorry I've been away so long. I haven't been licking my wounds, I've just been trying to keep up with life. I've been following Hal Higdon's marathon recovery plan, to ease myself into training. I've also been riding my bike!

I think I mentioned that I bought a bike. It's something I've wanted to do since I moved here and SD and I finally got some road bikes a couple of months ago. And although I can ride a bicycle, riding with clipless pedals is a whole new dimension. I really wanted training wheels to attach to the bike, but they don't make them in carbon-fiber. :-)

Because of my fear of said pedals, I waited until after the marathon to try to ride. I wasn't about to throw away three months of training because I fell of my bike and couldn't run. So a couple of weeks ago, I went on a store ride, from the local bike shop. It was a women's ride, and there were about eight of us that showed up. A lot of them were inexperienced, too, but I was the only newbie with clipless pedals. We rode out of the store and within 300 yards reached a red light. Uh-oh. I panicked and didn't clip out before I came to a dead stop. You know what that means--I fell down in front of God and everyone. Someone once told me it doesn't count as a fall unless it's done in front of witnesses. This one counted! I scraped my leg and elbow, something I haven't done since I was ten years old, and got bruises. It shook me up, but I continued on the ride without mishap.

It was nerve-wracking though. We rode on the freeway, technically the highway at that point, from one exit to the next. We rode along road construction, where there was no shoulder and very tight lanes. We rode through the Farmer's Market, where pedestrians crossed in the middle of the street without looking. But we also rode out in the country, past vineyards and beautiful scenery.

That ride went about 26 miles, but we stopped alot, mostly because of me, but sometimes for the others. I kept dropping the chain, but Debbie, the store owner, showed me how to get it back on without stopping. I made it back without mishap and learned a few things. Not bad for the first ride.

I didn't ride the following week, because I volunteered at a local bike ride. That's worth a post in itself, and I'll show you some pictures. Last Saturday, I went for another store ride. Debbie's husband was supposed to run the Western States 100, which was canceled because of the wildfires, but they went up anyway for the clinics. So she wasn't going to be there and no one else showed up. Just as I was loading the bike back up into the truck, a girl drove up. She kindly rode with me, but was way more experienced than me. We rode about 25 miles in two hours, which is a lot faster than the first ride. We headed south and it was really nice. She was fast and I couldn't keep up with her, but she'd wait for me and let me rest once in a while. Sometimes I'd go uphill in too high a gear, but I guess that will come with experience. I dropped my chain once, but I think I figured out what I was doing wrong and didn't have any more problems. And I didn't fall once. :-)

That ride really helped my confidence and I feel that I can go out alone without incident. As long as I don't get a flat tire!