Hills

My ride on Saturday was interesting. I realized two things about this upcoming race; that my competitive nature will likely cause me to kill myself on this race, and I am not ready for the hills.

There are a million cyclists around the route that I ride. Amazingly though, I only really see them when they are flying passed me or they are on the other side of the street. Saturday I was heading up a small but long incline when I got this funny feeling. I realized that there was somebody riding right on my tail. I looked over my shoulder for a brief enough time to see that this person was completely decked out in cycling gear. Without even thinking about it my competitive nature kicked in and the next thing I knew I was pedaling as fast as I could, lowering the gear to get more speed up the hill. If you had asked me 3 minutes earlier I would have said I was doing my best up that hill and could not do any better. When I got to the top of the hill I was dead. I no longer saw the rider out of the corner of my eye and took the opportunity to attempt to recover at all costs. Towards the end of the ride I found myself passing quite a few riders who, if not really hard core, at least spent money on bike gear like they were hard core. This made me feel great considering I don't even have shoes. How about that, me using only half my leg, passing a rider wearing a "Ride for the Roses" jersey!

My big goal of the day was to conquer one of the larger hills in this neighborhood. The elevation is about on par with some of the worst hills on the ride but the hill overall is shorter. I did the hill twice. The first time I did not raise my gear enough and found myself mashing for distance very quickly. I have no idea how I made it up that hill in the gear I was in. I felt like I was going to die. About half way up I passed an old man working in his lawn. By the look on his face when he saw me I can only guess that I looked as bad as I felt. The second time I changed gears much earlier and got the peddles going as fast as possible, knowing that the hill would slow them down quickly. I think I was doing better at the halfway point but after that the decline was exponential. In a high gear it's much harder to keep the bike under control and once my feel slowed down I didn't have any momentum and ended up mashing my way to the top again. The main result of the whole thing is that I bought some clip shoes on Sunday. I'll have to take my bike in to get the peddles put on this week.