Another tale of cycling daring-do: On Sunday I jumped out of bed fresh from a night at the cinema and promptly set about readying my road bike for the Donut Ride, my first since September. The Ides of March had been calling my name you see, and here I was, about to answer.
I've been doing this sort of madness long enough to know that 7am is not the time to be switching tires around, etc., but why let the knowledge years of messenger experience provides stop me from a little of the old last-minute-mechanics? (Note the bizarre-scarfwearing going on amidst the Astana team - is it Tour campionissimo Alberto Contador, his lymph glands extra-sensitive from early years of special injections at the old Liberty Seguros team?)
Well, I threw on some layers, including taping my old cheapie neoprene overbooties on over my sleek, formfitting and almost useless new Pearl Izumi overbooties. The neoprenes are so wrecked that the only way to keep them on is either with elastics (a dubious windproofer) or packing tape, and with four hours plus of 0 Celcius + windchill ahead of me I was busting out the Egyptian mummy style, no mistaking. And it did keep them from flapping into my drivetrain too much. Next step is to keep the feet warm, but one thing at a time. It looked ridiculous but frankly I didn't care.
There were 25 or so 'hardcore' people out on the sunny and cold morning ride, and I kept an eye out for wintry footwear; inevitably, some had winter-specific highcut cycle shoes (one or two even 'road' winter shoes). Most had some higher end overbooty thing happening. We had a northwesterly wind against us, making the trip up to King City a very slow and chilly affair. I stayed at the back, suffering mightily and sucking wheel as hard as possible.
There is nothing like the first 100km + ride after a few months off and in the cold too. Forget riding to work and back every day and two hours a week sweating my b-$%s off on the trainer in my apartment. All that is well and good. One hundred and twenty-two km and one post-bonk hamburger later, I was home and stretching out in the tub, invigourated to the full. They call it suffering for a good reason, by Christ. I really didn't help my case by neglecting a) sunglasses, b) a banana c) to oil my f!*#-ing chain beforehand.
A Note:
Was out for a beer with Hayward and the skin-headed trackmaster himself, Tofu, on Friday night. These two were planning a spring alley cat and swore me to secrecy on pain of dismemberment, as to the details of said epic. Apparently, I'll be manning a checkpoint all night, which sounds boring as hell. But perhaps better than the general insanity they've cooked up for the tens of people competing. Good for them.
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