Sundry items...

I have a serious case of vacationitis. Yes, it’s true. I am looking forward to the end of this week when I can leave work for the safety of home for the next 2 weeks. I can wake up in the morning when I want to. I can ride my bike when I want to. I can watch le Tour de France when I want to, and essentially, I will not be beholden to much of anyone for about 2 weeks, or actually a little more if you count weekends and all. 17 days of not being at work. It’s going to be nice indeed. I have it all planned out. Wake up, small breakfast, ride for an hour and a half or 2, come home, shower, tune in the last bit of the Tour stage of that particular day, take a nap during said Tour stage during that particular day, wake up, get a snack, ride for another couple of hours in the afternoon, get some dinner, maybe do some laundry, maybe do some cleaning, maybe do some bill paying, and essentially, just hang out. Relaxation is the key. I’ll definitely be working on my tan during this time as well. I’ve been looking forward to these 2 weeks just about all year since I’ve had this time planned to be off from work for oh, I don’t know, since about the start of February. See, the plan was initially to go to Superweek (www.internationalcycling.com/) in Wisconsin, which is a series of 17 bike races run over 17 days up there. Unfortunately, my fitness is not what I’d like to call good right now, because of the prior 5 weeks or so of NOT training and riding and racing, so going up there would be a shellacking for me certain. So I’ll just avoid that again this year, because my fragile ego can’t take the daily beat downs that Superweek provides. I need to get up there to do it though, and next year, well, next year is going to be the year I think, finally. Then again, this is what I said this year. Once again next year, the play it by ear ruling will come into play.

With the recent spate of training that I’ve been doing though, I’m starting to feel human on the bike again, and starting to feel good about just riding again. I’ve found that my happiness on the bike is directly proportional to how fit, or how un-fit I am while riding. Case in point. Last week, a 3 hour ride felt like a death march. This past weekend, a 3 hour ride was fun again, and I enjoyed being on the bike. I took Monday the 27th off from riding, as if I had ridden, it would have been my 11th straight day of riding, and everything was still pretty sore from this past weekend’s riding, so a day off, not a bad idea. I got to sit around, hang out with the SO, watch a movie, and got to bed early. All very good things. More riding this afternoon though. I have a 3-4 hour ride planned for today, and tomorrow, we’ll see how those go, as the weather right now, so hot and humid. It’s the time of year when taking 3 water bottles on the ride is a must if you’re going to go over 2 hours on the bike. 90 and humid, so nasty out there. At least it lets you get a good sweat going though. Salty dog is what I look like when coming back in from a ride like this. I have this sheen on me that looks like I’m covered in white. Which I actually am, because I’ve sweat out enough salt that it’s collected on my body and re-crystallized when it cools and forms a nice white crust over the body. It’s actually quite nasty indeed. It’s like you’re just a human salt lick and all. Not very attractive at all.