Stopping By The Woods

Well, I really don’t know where to begin.  I doubt if I can really catch up just in one post, but I will try, for those two or three people who stop by now and then to see if I am still on the planet.   :)   My year started out good.  I had some goals.  I have achieved a few of them, and I have not achieved a few of them.  I was running races trying to prep for the Mini Marathon.  I think the last one I logged here was the Anthem 5K.  Then after that, I did the Rodes City Run 10K, the Clover Leaf 10K, and the Papa John’s 10 miler.   That was on March 29.  I kept training after that, but a week or two later, I sustained a fluke injury, a bruised rib.  At work.  Sitting in my chair, lol.

But it was a bitch.  Every step I took was like someone poking me really rather severely in my right rib area.  Actually, it was like that with every deep breath I took.  I couldn’t believe my dumb luck.   For a while, I thought I was not going to be able to run the Mini.  I didn’t really make my mind up until about two days before the race, which was April 26.   I managed somehow to complete the race, a whole lot slower than I had originally planned, but considering the circumstances, just finishing was an accomplishment for me.

During that entire time, and since then, I sort of withdrew into myself a bit.  It’s not like I have become anti-social, but I didn’t really feel like I had much to say in terms of keeping this journal up.  I still am not quite sure if I have enough going on that’s worthy enough to write down, but maybe there is.   We’ll see.

After the mini, I stopped training.   I have only run two races since then, both 5Ks, the Thru the Zoo race on May 10, and the Race for the Cure on October 12.  I am in piss poor running shape, but I am going to get back into the swing of it.   I felt like I could barely finish the Race for the Cure, but all I had to do was think about my friend Diann who is recovering from breast cancer, and whatever pain I was feeling during the run seemed trivial.

So, what I have been doing, a whole lot since about June, is riding bicycles.   I had not been doing much riding in the past few years, but back in June, I bought a Cannondale Synapse.  Since then I have been totally and completely hooked.   I have picked up a couple of old Schwinns, too, and restored them.  I made one into a singlespeed with a flip-flop hub for fixie riding, and the other is an aqua colored 1984 Schwinn Traveler 12-speed that is now in it’s original glory.

I have been putting miles in.  It’s sort of addicting, like running is, when you get into it.  Since June 13, I have ridden over 1500 miles, which of course is not a whole bunch but considering I am a working stiff and I don’t really commute because I can’t bring myself to fight the Second Street Bridge traffic on my bike all alone, twice a day, I think the miles I have accumulated so far are good miles.  By that I mean they are miles that for the most part have been exceedingly freeing and supremely satisfying.  I wish I could think up some more superlatives to use.  Bicycling is great.  It doesn’t help me lose weight like running does but that’s not why I do it so much.   It’s very hard to describe but it’s kind of spiritual for me. 

More to come…I shall attempt to document the rides I did this weekend, but in a different post.