Saturdays....

Gotta love Saturdays. You really gotta love those Saturdays when the temps hit in the 70's for the first time of the year. I lot of riding was done on Saturday and I'm thankful for every mile that I rode.

At 6am, I briefly woke up, hit the snooze button and rolled back over in the bed (Who wakes up at 6am on a Saturday). The thought of my warm bed made me want to sleep longer but the thought of hitting the trails only to see a gorgeous sunrise was an even stronger temptation. So I packed up my gear and headed for the trail. The weatherman talked about how warm the day would be. I checked the temperature outside before leaving and it didn't feel too cold. But once I got to the trails, I realized I was not dressed properly for an early morning ride in February. We hit the trail around 7am and not even a mile in, I went through a creek bed with water in it only to get my feet wet. This sucked! Temps in the 30's and miles of riding left with wet feet. So the ride was a lot of fun. It was just three of us battling out on the single speeds. When I got back to the truck, I literally couldn't feel my big toes. When I took my shoes off, they were swollen pretty bad. I wasn't till noon that I actually started to regain feeling.

Around 11:30am, I suited up in my road gear and took Madame Madone out for a road ride. I decided to ride to the group ride meeting location instead of getting into the steel coffin. Most guys seem to always drive 5 miles to then ride 40-50 miles. I don't really understand it. But once I got to our meeting spot, the parking lot was full. Temps were getting into the upper 60's and everybody was out on the bikes. This was a huge motivation/inspiration. I didn't know there were that many cyclists in the Macon area. So I met up with some of the guys I normally ride with and come to find out that Brett Baron, a local rider, I starting up a new social cycling club. Everytime he introduced the idea to everyone, he would make it known that it is for us guys who just like to ride and socialize with beer. This sounded like my kind of club. He invited me to join up. Hopefully we'll get some pretty cool kits soon. So after the pre-ride socializing, we hit the road, rubber side down. My buddy Jake and I stayed with the group for about 18 miles then we branched off to do some hill repeats for about 6-7 miles. I can't emphasize how beautiful the day was. It wasn't too hot and certainly wasn't too cold (while on the road bike). We got about 30 miles in on the road bike.

The body is starting to feel pretty strong again. The hills aren't as tough and I still have a large reserve of energy at the end of the rides. I am slowly increasing my mileage as I go. Hopefully, I'll be ready for the Santos race in two weeks. From what I hear, there aren't any hills but there are some pretty tight technical sections throughout the course. I like these kind of trails because it challenges your riding skills, not just your endurance.

Till next time,
Keep the rubber side down!!