By Tuesday evening I already knew I'd be skipping the Wednesday ride. After four days of solid training rides, my legs were clearly in open rebellion. This was a distressing, if not unexpected, development. Actually, it was just another reminder that I'm not 25 any more. I hate those kinds of reminders. There was something else, though. Something just wasn't right. By noon, I had a headache and I was quite sure I'd made the right decision about taking a day off the bike. The rest of the day was pretty much downhill from there, and not in the freewheeling down the side of a mountain sense either.
So after a restless night of little sleep I rolled out of bed on Thursday morning wondering if the rain would give me a chance to ride. Even at 6 am there was a fair amount of green on the radar, but it looked like the morning levee ride stood a fighting chance. I stepped out the door and looked up at a sky full of stars. This time of year, Orion dominates the eastern sky at my house, and today it was clear and bright. I wondered where all the clouds were. The weather around here has been quite unsettled and it looks like something is about to blow up in the western Gulf of Mexico. The chances of rain for the weekend keep going up and up and I'm thinking we might see some rain for the district road championships up in Natchez this weekend.
Anyway, I had mixed feelings about doing the Thursday training ride today. On the one hand, I really felt like I needed a ride. On the other, I didn't want to find myself with sore legs on Saturday. So basically I was trying to take it easy without getting dropped, which isn't quite as easy as it sounds. One little complication was that Brett was there, and his easy ride is probably five miles per hour faster than mine. So despite trying to take it easy, I ended up doing a little bit more work than I'd planned even though I spent quite a bit of time sitting on the back and closing gaps. Overall, though, I think I did OK and survived the ride without doing too much damage to my fragile old legs.
So this weekend we have the LAMBRA road championships. Geez, I wonder how many road championships I've done over the years. Although the courses may be similar from year to year, every one feels quite different. Some years I feel like I'm in really good shape; some years, not so much. This would be one of the latter, I guess. I'll be making the 3-hour drive up to Natchez State Park early Saturday so I can bring all of the LAMBRA equipment in time for the first races at 10 am. The masters races start in the early afternoon. Then I'll be staying overnight and will probably at least start the Cat. 1/2/3 race, if only for the exercise. I'm hoping we won't be racing in the rain all weekend, but the forecast is not looking too encouraging in that regard. We'll see. The way things are going weather-wise, anything could happen -- and it usually does!
Meanwhile, back at the house, I've been battling Pantry Moths. These little buggers have been showing up here and there, mostly in front of my face, lately. The other day I found them in an old box of wheat crackers and thought I'd found the mother lode, but there were still a few flying around today, so I went methodically thought he pantry (yep, that's where they were) and eventually found the source -- an unopened box of pecan rice. Hopefully, they've been eradicated now!
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