still the craziest

[topaz]

OK. New rule: stupid-long bike commutes maybe once a week. Not twice a week. Definitely not twice a week. Once a week.

I think I did pretty well, in fact. I could tell very early on this morning that I was still a little tired from Monday's ride. Still, the trip in to the city went smoothly, I got to work in a neat 90 minutes, showered and went on with my day.

When I headed home at 5:30, it was clear right away that all the riding was taking its toll on me. I figured out that I needed to pace myself carefully if I wanted to make it home at all. This is normally very difficult for me. When I ride, I ride as fast as I can; I settle into the fastest pace that I can maintain comfortably and stick to that. I can rarely manage to slow myself down to conserve energy -- my body just keeps wanting to speed up.

Tonight, though, my body knew better, and kept me to a sensible cadence. I got home about 20 minutes later than I'd planned and quite worn out, but not completely and totally depleted, as I often end up after a long ride.

86.8 miles since Monday. That may be a personal record.

Things to take away from today:

• It was good that I pushed myself to do something I'd never done before and wasn't sure I could do.


• It was even better that I paid attention to my body and figured out how to pace myself so that I could make it all the way home and still have energy for the kids.


• When you see someone struggling with a flat tire by the side of the road, without the proper tools and know-how, stopping to help him fix it is a wonderful thing to do... and yet, you might want to consider being the good Samaritan someplace other than the side of a Carlisle road, at dusk, in May.


• A very hot shower has a theraputic effect on a thousand mosquito bites.

Yeah.

Comments

[dancingwolfgrrl.livejournal.com]

Just in case you haven't discovered it, Afterbite is my favorite non-toxic thing that really works for bug bites.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the recommendation. Ellen says she thinks we have some in the upstairs cupboard -- the bites actually aren't bothering me now, but if they start getting bad I'll dig around for the stuff.