A Bit To Much

Wednesday morning's ride seemed harder than it should have, and I had my suspicions why. All day at work I felt kind of "off." I tried to ignore it, of course, but the fact was that I still had this nagging postnasal drip and occasional lung congestion. Frankly, it was pissing me off that it was still hanging around. The weather outside was beautiful. A little on the windy side, but otherwise really great, so when I looked up and saw that it was 5:15, I picked up my bag and made a run for the door. I thought that maybe a nice ride out to the lakefront might set me right, so I headed north at 5:30 wondering if there would be anybody there to ride with.

Riding down Carrollton Avenue at 5:30 pm on a weekday is not for the faint of heart. All three lanes are clogged with irritated commuters. The right side of the road features a wide array of potholes, debris and other obstacles, and there are cars pulling into and out of every business, driveway and intersection along the way. Successfully running this gauntlet requires the same level of concentration, bike handling, and disregard for personal safety as the last few laps of a fast technical criterium. It even ends, for the most part, with a sprint across Palmetto Street that requires merging across two lanes of traffic bound for the Interstate. Sometimes it's kind of fun. Sometimes it's not. On this particular day, with a nice south tailwind, it was fun accelerating up to 30 mph working my way from lane to lane at the same speed as the cars. The rest of the trip down Carrollton and Wisner becomes gradually more sedate as one nears the lakefront.

Soon after I got to Lakeshore Drive I met up with Brooks and Brandon. After a few miles of riding side-by-side Brooks said, "I guess we should do a few fast laps." So we got a little paceline going and the speed quickly ramped up. This is where I remembered that I wasn't really feeling so good. We did a solid half hour hammer session, pushing into the headwind at 21 mph and flying the other way at 29, and by the time we eased up I felt pretty well cooked. It was probably a bit too much under the circumstances. I guess I'm still not quite over last week's cold. The rest of the evening I felt kind of uncomfortable. Maybe I was running a low grade fever or something. Anyway, when I woke up this morning I rather quickly decided I needed a rest day, so I went back to sleep for another hour. Later in the day, around 3 pm, the folks at Champs Collision called to say the car was ready, so I packed it in early and rode home to pick up the rental car so I could drive out to the repair shop and trade the Nissan Sentra for the Volvo. Since The Wife and I have taken our bikes to work all week, the rental car mostly just sat parked next to the house, but the insurance was covering $15 per day and the cost was $18 per day, so I figured it was worth it just in case something came up. Anyway, everything went smoothly, I paid them the $500 deductible which I'm supposed to get back at some point, and finally broke down and got a haircut. I hate getting haircuts.