Smooth

Smooth was what my legs felt like after I shaved them for the inaugural training race that was supposed to take place last Saturday.

Grating was the sound of the plow clearing the road in front of our house at 4:30am. No racing Saturday-cancelled!

Numbing was the sound of my trainer while I sat on it gutting out another weekend of epic workouts staring at the washing machine in the basement.

Soggy is what happened to my chamois as I sweated through some tough intervals and the annoying drips down into my socks.

Clear were my intentions to not let the snow and cold get me down.

Eager I am to test out a full winter on the trainer against the ravages of the frost heaved roads and trails.

On another note, we have wildlife in middle earth. We have a resident deer who we have donned the name “Floppy Paw.” If you are from southern California and have seen the commercials for the San Diego Zoo you will recognize the zebra taunting the lions with his “floppy paw.” Anyhow, the deer has a rear leg that just is not right and drags it all over the place eating our shrubs.

DNS Times 2

DNS or in biking land = Did Not Show…..or for me lately it means it Did Not Snow….
Yes, we are still waiting for the mass amounts of snow received the second week of February to melt away.

For this weekend’s racing activities I had only good intentions of heading out to Plymouth, MA and jumping in a training race on Saturday. But then I got an email from my new team about a nice long initiation ride that was happening on Sunday. So I decided that a training road race with a bunch of skitterish Cat 4/5 men would be too much of a risk to the rest of the racing season – who needs a broken anything this early? Plus, the idea of driving eight hours round trip was not very enticing. So that was my first DNS of the weekend.

However, Sunday was not an intentional DNS. And no, I did not get baffled by the new daylight savings time change – I got lost driving to the meeting spot for the ride. What really stinks is that I cannot seem to orient myself to a map to save my life. I just don’t have the map skills. So when the written directions fail my very patient hubby spoon feeds me directions over the phone from a map. It sure is a good thing that bike races have fancy arrows and tape on the courses otherwise I would never finish a race. Unfortunately, after driving almost two hours, I missed the team ride by 20 minutes. Then I spent the next couple of hours and $1.10 in tolls backtracking to my house. I was so wicked bummed. For once I was going to ride outside and with people – for the first time in several months I would not be in the basement on the trainer looking at the washing machine…..sigh…..at least I was able to ride outside and I did not lose a toe to frostbite either.