Bad Legs

As soon as I got on the bike today I knew something wasn't right. For some reason my legs felt achy all day. To use the technical term, I had a case of the dreaded "bad legs." Why? No idea. So on my way out to the lakefront when I spotted Rob turning onto Wisner Blvd. ahead of me, it was hard to pick up my pace and catch him, even though he saw me and eased up to wait. Anyway, as the group was about to start, Howard L., who lost his house in Katrina, looked over and commented about his gloves. He was wearing these black gloves with faux fur around the wrists. Apparently the only gloves he could find were his wife's!

I was glad that the pace stayed pretty tame all the way out to Venetian Isles today, but on the way back things started getting out of hand. There I was, sitting in near the back going 30 mph and the gap in front of me is opening up! I had to make a few hard efforts just to stay in the paceline, which at one point got up to 35 mph. I can't say I felt terrible. Just flat. Really flat. I rode home down Canal Blvd. and looked at the watermarks on the houses up around the tops of the doorframes and thought about how long is was going to take to put everything back together. Depressing. Finally, I got back to my own "happy place" on uptown island and again thought how lucky I was and how much of a difference for or five feet of elevation made. I mean, in many parts of the country there's more elevation change than that between the sidewalk and the front door.

Got a call from GiVo yesterday evening as she was driving back from CA to AZ, having finished up her rotation in Sacremento (at least I think that's where it was). She will be riding for the Diet Cheerwine team next season, making most of the big races around the country. New bike, new kit, etc. Sweet.

Tomorrow I'm headed out for another Sunday Northshore training ride. It should be nice. The only bad part is that the new refrigerator is being delivered in the morning, according to Sears, so I will have to miss the big event.