Another Blog Post

It was 83F when I awoke in the dark, at least half an hour before sunrise (right now it's 95 with a heat index of 109). I usually allow myself about ten minutes to get out the door and another ten or fifteen to get out to the levee. This morning I thought everything was on schedule until I glanced down at my watch, once there was enough light to read it. I was still about a mile from the levee and it was already 6:15. How the *&^% did that happen?? I think I must have read my watch wrong at some point and thought I had more time than I did. Luckily, the group started a few minutes late, so I didn't have to start my morning with a time trial.

The long ride today was really quite smooth and steady all the way out to the turnaround and most of the way back. Eventually, though, Mark and Matt and Brett started pushing the pace and in the midst of one of Mark's 29 mph pulls things came apart. I ended up off the front in a 4-man group that was going pretty hard, although I was mostly just trying to keep from being dropped. When we caught up with Chad and Rob, who had left earlier than the group and were riding a bit slower, it looked like we just blew right past them, so I was surprised a minute later when they turned up in our group. I should have known that Rob couldn't, wouldn't have Matt and Brett blow past him like that. Naturally, when we got close to the playground and I pulled off the front, someone surged, someone else counter-surged, and I sat up and shifted to the small ring for the ride home. Anyway, it was good training.

I read yesterday that Axel Merckx is retiring from racing. That one really hit me hard. It's not that I don't think he deserves to retire. I mean he's been one of the classiest, most solid and most courageous road riders I've ever seen, and his accomplishments have put him in the top tier of the cycling elite. The thing that really got to me, though, was that Axel is the son of the legendary Eddy Merckx, about whom I'm sure everyone knows. So why is his retirement such a problem for me? Well, you see, when I started racing Eddy was still winning the Tour de France. Now his son, who was born the year I started racing, is retiring. Whoa! I hate it when reality whacks me in the face like that.

So this is officially my 900^th blog post. I had never actually looked to see how many times I'd posted to the blog until Jill, up in Alaska, noted her 500^th post the other day. I could do the math and estimate how much time I've wasted doing this over the past three years, but I don't think I really want to know.