So now I’ve been driving for a week.  More importantly I haven’t ridden in nine days.  Nine.  That’s a lot. The car-commute continues to stink as much as it ever has, worse now that the roads are sketchy and traffic crawling.  I see the few, the brave, cycling along on the pathways and I regret having to drive.  Not preparing ahead of time.  Not having proper tires.  My dislike of car-commuting grows.

The body has revolted.  Every muscle is suddenly contracted and shortened.  Touch my toes?  Ha!  Can barely touch my knees now, which is good because my knees ache when they’re bent.  And when they’re straight.  My back aches in places that have been quiet and happy all season.  My right pinkie finger and it’s neighbour waver between normal and numb.  My neck feels like wire cable.  I feel old.  I feel like a man approaching 80, not 40.

So I deal with this most unfortunate situation the old-fashioned way.  The addict demands to be satisfied and it doesn’t care how.  If there’s to be no cycling, then something else.  Anything else.  While driving to the gas station – something I hadn’t done in weeks – it crossed my mind that they sell cigarettes, that I could be smoking on my way to work instead of just riding the clutch and sucking exhaust fumes.  I declined that rush.

Food.  I lie to myself and think well, I didn’t eat any doughnuts while stuffing another cookie in my pie cookie-hole.  I go back for seconds at every meal.  I order the large satay.  This was marginally tolerable while riding but lethal now.  Self-control falls victim to the ravaging addict and I’m paying the price on all fronts.

Then there’s the drugs.  Not any drugs, the drug.  Crack.  Crack was waiting for me when I got home today.  The sight of it causes panic.  You know where this road leads but the addict shouts.  It’s a wonderful ride he says, besides, it’s the journey, not the destination.  You cave.  The rush of the first hit shoots through your body, your senses reeling.  Dopamine levels shoot off the charts, the pleasure center at Command Central takes down the defensive mechanisms.  It’s like fireworks, on the inside.  The addict is satisfied.  For a moment.

But it doesn’t last.  More.  You need more.  I resist.  Debate.  A fight.  We rationalize.  I accept defeat and feed the addict, bathing in the sensations until they flit away again.  More.  No.  More!  At what cost?  MORE!!  I think we’ve had enouMORE I SAID!  GIVE. ME. MORE!  And I do.

So where do we go from here, my addict and I?  We spread our disease and share our poison.  We infect those around us and seek out our kindred.  So I share with you.

• Dark chocolate
• Peanut butter
• Maple syrup
• Crispy rice

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler.  While that’s happening, mix the peanut butter, maple syrup and crispy rice (cereal) together into spherical-like blobs.  I assume I don’t have to say “put them on a pan” or other more familiar, obvious steps.  While you’re waiting for the chocolate to melt, drop them in the freezer to make them easier to handle.  Pour melted chocolate over spheri-blobs.  Eat.  Eat more.  Eat more than you should.  Gorge.  The earthly equivalent of the White Witch’s Turkish delight.  My wife is my dealer.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I need another hit.

I started off last year avoiding the bike if it even looked like it might rain.  This wasn’t so much a fear of rain as an excuse to take the day off.  The introduction of our Gentlemen’s Wager (first to 1000km) rewarded riding in the rain, doubly so when my competition wouldn’t.  While I wouldn’t say I embrace riding in the rain, I wasn’t letting it stop me.

Tuesday afternoon, I rode home in a rain that had me sloshing about within the first two kilometers.  It was a miserable ride with miserable rain and a miserable headwind.  I did not enjoy the ride as one might infer and I vowed no more riding in the rain until I was properly outfitted.  That arbitrarily limiting statement stood three days before it became a challenge.  A challenge to which I quickly succumbed.

Ordinarily one might think of failing a challenge to be failure.  In this scenario I think failing to live up to the statement I’m not riding in the rain is in fact the preferred course of action.  I am, after all, not made of a water-soluble exterior (at least not while I’m still moving and breathing), and the gear that I have keeps me reasonably warm.  Or so I thought.

It started innocently enough.  A check of the forecast this morning showed a light rain turning to snow as the day wore on.  The radar map showed a large green (IE rain) mass heading from the west but the timing showed the worst of it arriving about the time I was due back.  I questioned my wisdom as I geared up, stuffing my pockets with enough road fuel for a 3-hour trip, strapping on my sort-of water proof Gore-Tex pants and my not-water-proof riding jacket but forged ahead with my ride.

The relative lack of puddles and the dry spots around parked vehicles suggested a lack of significant precipitation.  The wavering trees confirmed the presence of the 33km/h NW wind.  Did I forget to mention that bit?  Oh – yes, in addition to the precipitation, there was a wee wind.

The geographical location of home base presents some logistical issues when faced with a north westerly wind.  We are higher than the primary north/south pathway system, which lies to the east.  We go down to the path and up to home.  Heading south on the path is, with a handful of exceptions fairly flat – easy pedaling – and as such, my desired direction.  However, while it would be a fast and easy trip south, it would mean the entire return journey faced into the aforementioned wind.  Not appealing.

Head west or north from home base and you’re climbing.  It’s not huge elevation nor is it killer-steep.  It’s a long, steady slog up the hills and today, into the wind.  I opted to tackle the hills and the wind first, riding north and west as far as I could before heading home both downhill and with a tailwind.  Excellent plan.

I don’t often ride in the northwest as I have no destination there.  This means I’m not overly familiar with the path system or even the road network.  I can’t keep track of which trail or boulevard is going which way.  While the City of Calgary has done a commendable job signing the bike routes on the roads, there are some gaps and I could not for the life of me figure out how to get over – or if I wanted to – Beddington Trail while staying on the path.  It didn’t help that with the overcast skies and the lack of streets or avenues (so one might be able to figure out what direction he was pedaling), I had no idea what direction the road  was going.  I knew I wanted to go north, but I no longer knew where North was.  I headed down dead-ended bike paths, back-tracked up hills and generally confused myself a great deal.

I could have used my gadget to look at a map, find my position on it and then reference the fantastic City of Calgary Pathway and Bikeways app to figure out how to get where I wanted to go.  I didn’t do that.  I didn’t do that because that’s not what I do, apparently.

The precipitation was no longer a drizzle.  It was a full-on rain but I’d thwarted it with careful seam preparation and thick winters sock over my double-layer winter running socks, a gift from Best Wife.  While I was pretty sure parts of me were getting wet, I was still warm save for my face so I ploughed on trying to find a way over to Nose Creek park from the north side of whatever that road it s that runs east-west (that’d be Beddington Trail for future reference).  I continued to twist and turn until I crossed a pedestrian bridge over a multi-lane road (success!) and began heading east.

The quick blasts downhill stung my face with rain turning to something more solid and there was standing water on the flat sections now.  Slogging along up a long hill, I caught sight of another Porsche parked in someone’s driveway and thought to myself – what a strange coincidence, two convertible Porsches back into their…wait a minute… nooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!  Ah damn!  I was not going east.  I had not crossed the right road.  I was going in circles.

I pulled under the cover of the Husky gas pumps and ate a Honey Stinger waffle while I pondered my next move.  I had no idea where I was, how I got there or where I should be going.  I’d been riding for an hour and was no longer warm and dry, my feet squishing around in wet socks.  I picked a road at random and followed it until it turned into something I recognized and then followed that.  Slowly I picked my way back to Centre Street and Beddington something-or-other where I knew I’d find my path north.

Slowly I ground up the hill into the driving rain and headwind, knowing that some downhill salvation was waiting on the other side.  I was cold, wet and fully insane in my determination to get where I was going.  I pedaled down the hill to the underpass which would feed me into Nose Creek Park but stopped short.  Do I really want to do this?  I could turn around right now, slog it up this hill and then coast downhill almost all the way home.  Home, where it’s warm and dry and I can climb into a hot shower.

That’s the thing with insanity.  It’s insane.  I pedaled north, fighting with my clipless pedal that was refusing to clip (making it remarkably slippery as wet metal on metal tends to be).  I started talking to my pedal out loud which should have been a sign.  Finally clipped in, I rode into the deserted park and headed east.  The rain left large puddles on the trail and the drivetrain sprayed water up the back of my right leg until it finally found a way past the Gore-Tex, dripping it’s icy self down the back of my formerly dry calf.  I did not smile.

I chose the easy route out of the park, anxious to head for home, having accomplished my crazy, pointless mission.  The north wind was pushing me furiously and I found myself in the top of the big ring, making my first real speed of the day.  I checked my mileage and the time, thought about the consequences of going past my turn and decided to push for the river.  My gloves were soaked through, frozen fingers and frozen toes a constant distraction.  I rode on averaging 30km/h over the next 10km all the while the return trip looming in my mind.

I stopped under the Memorial Drive overpass, common sense finally trumping the enjoyment of speed.  I snarfed down a Clif bar with shockingly numb hands, making a futile attempt to hide from the wind behind a bridge pillar.  I could no longer ignore the pain coming from my wet toes and my fingers were all but non-functional they were so cold.  The rain had long turned to a heavy wet snow making a less-than-stellar ride that much more arduous.  I stuffed the empty wrapper in my jersey pocket and turned around for home.

The ride home was exactly as you might think.  A freezing, driving slush/rain, a fierce headwind and a Rescue Bike that was beginning to malfunction.  I couldn’t determine whether it was my inability to feel my fingers that was hampering the bike, or if it was the bike rebelling against the conditions.  I stared at a spot a few feet in front of the tire, shifted into the middle of the middle ring and tried not to think about my frozen appendages.

Half way up the bus trap hill, I determined that in addition to my own lack of digit-functionality, the Rescue Bike was indeed sick.  I tried to shift into the granny ring so I could sit and pedal slowly up the hill but it wouldn’t shift.  This is most distressing when you have already made the mental leap to a lower gear and it is the first time in memory I debated getting off and pushing rather than risk falling over with my feet frozen to their pedals.

I made it to the top of the hill and, knowing the rest of the climb that was waiting for me, I persuaded the chain onto the granny ring and climbed the last kilometer home.  I managed to get the Rescue Bike up onto it’s perch before making a bee-line for a hot shower.  My fingers howled in protest but my feet made no complaint at all, at first.  Without warning, my toes started signalling that they’d been run over by a truck, smashed with a hammer and stubbed against a table at running speed.  The pain was enormous.  I was paying the price for ignoring them when they signaled their increasing displeasure and finally their resignation during the ride.  Despite growing up and spending my I don’t need a toque just because it’s -30C years in a place that has an average winter temperature of -30 degrees, I don’t believe my toes have ever been that cold – they’ve certainly never shared their anger with such clarity before.  It was an excruciating 5 or 6 minutes before they started to calm down.

It’s now 12 hours since I embarked on my frozen adventure and I’ve recovered nicely.  My muddy clothes have all been washed and hang-drying in anticipation of another outing.  If it wasn’t for scheduling conflicts, I would be gearing up for a 2nd round as we speak.  Clearly I haven’t learned anything.

Do you see what happens when you say never?  It’s makes you crazy.

I could blame the numerous temptations between my last ride in November and this spring – the multi-day gorgefest that is Christmas, then New Year’s Eve, Valentine’s Day and finally Easter.  I could point the finger of blame at my Awesome Wife who has developed a wicked skill set in the kitchen that includes the ability to whip up a dozen chocolate-chip cookies in a matter of minutes or piles of pancakes, sausages and bacon on a Sunday morning.  I could pass the buck to my evil co-workers who insist on bringing in three dozen doughnuts every Thursday.

I could, but I won’t.  Nobody held me down and poured gravy down my throat.  Nobody held a weapon-shaped pastry to my head and forced me to eat it.  Nobody made me eat seconds.  And thirds.  It’s nobody’s fault.  I’m going to find nobody and kick their ass just as soon as I can un-wedge myself from this chair.  When did they start making chairs so narrow anyway?

The other day I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen in years.  Eric and I appeared ever so momentarily in the Calgary-shot television show Viper (that lasted only slightly longer than our appearance) in the mid-90s.  We’d been hired to be background tough-guys in a bar fight scene and for generally prowling around on our motorcycles.  Eric was a power-lifter of considerable size, an imposing presence behind the counter at the motorcycle shop.  We affectionately nick-named him No-Neck which we only ever said out loud when out of his reach.  I on the other hand was trying hard to create that same presence with my long hair and long moustache and the large chip on my shoulder.  I can say with certainty that all it got me was attention from the wrong people.

At any rate, Eric was almost unrecognizable when I saw him again having lost upwards of 60 pounds from the last time I’d seen him.  I genuinely would not have recognized him if we hadn’t been standing in our old place of work.  The change was remarkable and inspiring.

Speaking of inspiration, there’s a wager about.  It is, as last year’s was, a gentlemen’s wager meaning only bragging rights and pride are on the line and ethical behaviour is assumed.  No giving your GPS to someone else to put miles on.  No driving it around in your car.  No hacking the data files.  Well, no hacking your own data files at any rate

The wager is simple: first rider to 1000km.  I suppose there are three wagers – 1000km, 1500km and 2000km.  Considering I managed just shy of 2000km all of last season (while still winning the last rider riding wager), this is a tall order.  It’s also serious motivation.  For Adam.

I noted earlier that Adam would ride to work with one foot missing (it’s just a flesh wound) if there was competition on the line, real or imagined.  What I should have done was bet that we could get Adam to ride in the snow, sleet and rain as I would have one that in the first 7 days.  I was convinced that with the snow on my car the other morning, even Adam wouldn’t have ridden.  Wrong.  Not only had he ridden while I was brushing heavy, wet snow from my car, he had the audacity to rub it in.  Beating Adam to 1000km is going to be a significant challenge.

The Cheater has all but stopped riding to work.  In fact I don’t think I’ve seen his bike there once this week (as opposed to my much more dedicated twice).  This is not to say he’s not riding however.  Alberto has been taking advantage of his wife-less, kid-less domestic situation and putting on 40 kilometers after work.  This will not do.  This will not do at all.  While Adam and I are busy filling our familial obligations, The Cheater is riding.  While this is clearly cheating, the Council of Gentlemen’s Wagers has determined that it is within the confines of our agreement and thus must be permitted.

There is hope for me yet however.  Chris H. you may remember has been blessed with a compact wind profile, thus enabling him to handily embarrass the rest of us with his jackrabbit speed.  He’s managed to log a massive three thousand meters this season.  I just might be able to fend him off if I can maintain my progress.

This leads me to the present conundrum.  Well, it is for me – it clearly wouldn’t be for Adam.  Depending on which electronic gadget one consults for weather information, tomorrow ranges anywhere from slightly wet but warm to down-right miserable with the threat of a double head-wind gusting to 33km/h.  It is with resignation that I set my cycling clothes in the bathroom and dig out my plastic pants.  I will ride tomorrow, in the rain, in a double-headwind, in my plastic pants.  Can you feel my enthusiasm?

Damn you Gentlemen’s Wager.

Friday night came and went without too much untoward culinary scarfing.  My dad had BBQ’d up some fantastic chicken breasts some chicken breasts in the fridge so Trace cooked them up and we had some super-tasty chicken-breast sandwiches for supper.  Saturday was spent grazing primarily on my staple toast-with-peanut-butter and anything else that couldn’t escape my grasp in time like the box of Junior Mints, the Three Muskateers bar, ice cream, frozen yogurt and yet another birthday cupcake.  I now had enough food packed away to ride the 120 kilometre trip home.

Sunday was of course Thanksgiving, held at my aunt’s place for the first time in a few years.  She is a notoriously, unbelievably excellent cook.  The dishes are prepared perfectly and are all, without exception, mouth-watering.  The usuals  – turkey cooked to perfection, fluffy mashed potatoes, melt-in-your-mouth buns, perfect stuffing and gravy from heaven – and the family staples – a strawberry-and-goat-cheese salad, turnips prepared with butter and brown sugar, yam prepared with goat cheese and I-don’t-know-what-else-but-wow-it’s-good, beets, artichoke hearts, pineapple salad, homemade cranberry sauce and…more.  There was so much fantastic food I can’t even remember it all.  I ate some of everything and went back for seconds.  I suffered a massive bout of self-induced turkelepsy.

After all the leftovers were packed away and the dishes done – which is no small feat for 13 people, though I had no part in the clean-up shamefully – we had dessert.  Two kinds of pie – pumpkin and peach, topped with real whipped cream.  As one who is lactose-intolerant and generally avoids cow-based dairy of all types, I slid the whipped cream off and spread it on the kid’s pie.  No.  No I didn’t.  I took that quarter-pie piece of peach pie topped with homemade whipped cream and what did I do?  I put it in my piehole.  All of it.  However when I was offered an equally over-sized piece of pumpkin pie piled high with more homemade whipped cream, I turned it down.  No…that’s a lie.  It chased the peach pie down the piehole and tried calling for reinforcements.  I do believe of the 5 definitions St. Thomas Aquinas used defining gluttony, I hit 4 right out of the park, the lone hold-out being the inappropriate time (when is it an inappropriate time to eat food one might ask).

I capped this weekend orgy of food off this morning with not one but two of my aunt’s absolutely stellar cinnamon buns.  No other cinnamon bun comes even remotely close to delivering the sheer pleasure that these carry.  They’re so good I’m not sure I feel guilty.  However…  I hopped back on the trainer after arriving home this afternoon and couldn’t avoid noticing the extra padding I’d developed.  While trying to recover from the interval sprints I’d been riding, I was laid out across the bike, my forearms resting across the bars, head hanging gasping for air while I pedaled feebly and tried not to puke continued a more relaxed pace and speed.  This position nicely amplified the smack smack smack smack of my sweaty thighs meeting my sweaty belly with each pedal stroke.  Or maybe that was my heart trying to pump the weekend’s adventure through my system.  Either way, I’m pretty sure I have enough energy stores to do the Chestermere loop and the Red Deer loop now.  In succession.

Ah well.  It looks like a week of cold but otherwise excellent commuting weather ahead of me so perhaps the trainer and I will spend some evenings together to address some of this excess.  Or not.

I was complaining commenting the other day that some combinations of my riding gear seemed more prone than others to funnel the fall wind down my back when Adam correctly noted that “that’s because your shirt doesn’t fit you anymore – it’s too big”.  He’s right – it doesn’t, and it is.  That’s pretty cool and that it was noticed by someone else is even more rewarding.  In typical Adam fashion however, it should be noted that while I’ve lost 30 pounds, he’s lost in excess of 60.  That’s amazing.  Really.  And it looks good on him.

There’s always the thin end of the wedge lurking just around the corner though.  The thin, deep-fried, sugar-coated edge of the doughnut wedge.  Tomorrow is doughnut day – nemesis day.  It’s threatening to derail my sub-200 progress entirely.  Earlier in the week I wanted some fat-laden dough-circles in the worst way.  They were haunting my every waking moment, driving me to distraction.  And why?  Because I’d had one two on Thursday, followed by some of the home-made cookies in the pantry on Friday, the rest of them on Saturday and Middle-Monster’s icing-coating chocolate birthday cupcakes on Sunday.  And pizza.  And hotdogs.  You see what I mean by the thin end of the sugary wedge?  When it comes to doughnuts, one really is the loneliest number!  Luckily my laziness trumps my appetite – I’m unlikely to cycle to the nearest Tim’s for a doughnut.

My food consumption wasn’t all bad over the weekend however, but it was…unusual.  I was sitting at the table feeling lifeless and worn out after a morning of single-parenting the monsters, trying to sort out this craving I hadn’t been able to satisfy.  Then it dawned on me.  I wanted pickles and not just any pickles.  I wanted Bicks Polskie Ogorki pickles specifically.  What makes that so odd is – I don’t eat pickles.  I don’t not eat them, they’re just not something I ever put in the shopping cart.  I pinged Trace and asked her to pick some up on the way home.  I fished them out of the bag the moment she stepped in the door and proceeded to eat half the jar.  She thinks I might be pregnant.

And then there’s the staple, my favourite, my stand-by.  Smooth peanut butter – oh how I love thee.  In the morning, in the evening, when I’m up or down, peanut butter is the perfect food.  None of this organic, processed-by-envirocherubs-in-an-outdoor-unfactory stuff either.  Gimme the gluco and the hydro and the addiditive and the preservative.  In a kitchen over-flowing with organic whole foods in one stage or another of becoming award-worthy healthy meals, it is the one commercial food I refuse to relinquish.

What about you – what’s your wedge?  What are you unwilling to sacrifice?

If you’ll excuse me I think I’ll go get some PB now…and another pickle.

I re-traced my Big Ride route today and added a detour into downtown Calgary to add some extra mileage.  I didn’t want to find myself short of the 80km target I’d set like last time out.  I was looking forward to having an excuse to chow down the Shot Blok’s Lemon-Lime flavour and the Crunchy Peanut Butter bar I had lingering around.  I got a late start but at least I had a reasonable temperature at that point.

The wind was blowing from the south which comprised the bulk of the route out.  I hate wind.  A lot.  Immediately I started making excuses about my speed to nobody in particular. I cranked up the tunes and started at my front wheel while I pumped away trying to get lost in the journey.  I’m starting to despise this part of my route lately, especially as part of the Big Ride route.  I’m getting bored with it, which doesn’t bode well for a winter on the fluid trainer or the rollers or both…or neither…I could go back to slothful fatness, hibernating the cyclist portion for the season.

I wasn’t feeling particularly pumped to be out.  There’d been a string of late nights and early mornings (they’re always early with 3 monsters on the go), last night no exception as Trace and I hit the town to watch my cousin’s Calgary debut with Static in the Stars (good show).  I’d “forgotten” my dietary restraint at the post-corporate golf supper Friday and had more than my share of roast beast, not to mention a number of trips to the dessert trays.  ”Oh, but they’re just little desserts” I’d said to myself “and all that meat is protein”.  Last night’s entertainment included a lousy meal at Chili’s (but with exceptional company) and yet more dessert.  ”I’m going to need these easy carbs for tomorrow”.  Excuses.  I felt fat, slow and more than a touch unhealthy.

The ride out consisted of nothing but the wind.  The excuses began again.  ”Yeah I know I’m slow today but it’s a recovery ride” or “my trainer told me zone 2, nothing harder” and my favourite “I had an ice cream at McKay’s in Cochrane before I left and am looking forward to a second one when I get back”.  Excuses. (Cochrane to Chestermere via the canal route is 74km one way.  150km is a good ride, a believable ride – heck, it’s not even a century – 100 miles.  Next summer’s goal)

I am pedaling along making excuses for my performance in a headwind to nobody in particular.  And they’re blatant lies.  I mean really…who am I lying to and why?  Why do I care what anyone else thinks?  That’s just it though isn’t it?  I can talk about not caring all I want, but when push comes to shove or rabbit comes to chase, I’m formulating excuses to use in conversations that will never happen.

I had to spend most of the ride staring at my wheel, my knees and the path at the leading edge of my helmet visor (while positioned to stare at my knees).  To look up at the path would mean suddenly knowing how far there was to go before the next corner might turn the headwind into a slight crosswind and relief.  About 14km out of Chestermere, the route starts to head northwest again, bringing some respite from the accursed headwind.

I rode until the path stops, did a u-turn and stopped for a quick drink and a note to let Trace know I’d at least made it here, and then started heading back.  The path was now full of casual bicycle owners, seniors trying to stay active and families out with the kids.  I passed them all with a flurry of shouting, jeering and pointing.  Okay, maybe not.

I got tangled up behind a senior couple and their dog in a trailer, trying to negotiate the barricade across the rural highway when two cyclists got tied up behind me.  I took advantage of the senior’s decision to walk their bikes across the highway and passed them, not wanting to end up behind the two cyclists.  Why?  Uhm…well…if you’re reading this and don’t understand why I couldn’t permit myself to be passed without a fight, then I’ve not been doing my job here.

I lowered my head until I could only see 3 or 4 meters in front of me and started to hammer away.  I stayed in lower gears trying to keep the cadence up and had to concentrate with every stroke to avoid slacking off.  I put some distance between us but they weren’t going away.  Each time we headed into the wind I’d drop a gear and fight to keep the cadence high, shifting up when the wind died down or our course changed direction.  I prepared my excuse “it wasn’t this windy when I rode in a few minutes ago”.

At the next crossing only one of them was visible with a quick backward glance, 10 maybe 15 meters behind me.  ”No way” I thought “not going to happen” but even as I said it, I continued to ride to the right of the path giving him lots of room to go around me.  I focused on each contraction, marveling at the leg’s ability (and willingness) to continue pedaling as hard as they were.  By the next crossing he and they were gone – I’d successfully ridden him off my wheel.  But I was going to pay the price.

I’d already made up my mind to head west into downtown hoping to put on enough extra clics to get the 80km.  I got lost – not actually lost but no solid idea how to get from where I was to where I wanted to be.  Sure, I could ride it like I would drive it but that seemed foolish.  I still managed to find myself in the middle of downtown Calgary on 5th ave crowded with afternoon traffic.  I made my way to MEC and was in the process of texting Trace to suggest she bring the kids when she pinged me asking to meet at MEC.  Tah Dah!

She was going to be 15 or 20 minutes getting there so having no bike lock and not finished my ride, I headed back out to put some more miles on.  I did  a quick loop, going up to 11th street, down 9th ave to 5th street, up to tenth ave and back to MEC.  I had little gas left.  I waited for Trace to arrive and stashed the bike in the van while we went inside, empty water bottles in hand.  I wasn’t sure yet whether I was going to complete my ride or take the right-there-easy-already-loaded-going-my-way lift home.

I was torn between wanting to go out to put in another 30 or 40km, whatever it would take to hit 100km, just finishing the ride with the original planned 80, or throwing in the towel and going home with the kids. There would be no shame or judgement in the van, in fact they’d be happy – but I’d know.  After stocking up on a fistful of Shot Bloks and bars and some Honey Stingers waffles, we headed back to the van, me still unsure of what I was going to do.  Here’s my excuse.

I couldn’t.  I just couldn’t do it.  There was no way, so I unloaded the bike, put my helmet on and bid the family adieu.  I made it half a block before realizing I hadn’t turned Strava back on and pulled over to the curb just as the family went by, smiling and waving.  I had a flash of “what have I done?” as they disappeared up the road leaving me and my salt-crusted face to pedal home.  I bobbed and weaved through the city until I could get back on the path, heading east towards my original route.

As I made the turn from behind the zoo (hello muskox!) and started heading north, I was greeted by an evil surprise.  The wind had changed and was blowing from the north.  A headwind in and out is so not cool.  Wiped from not eating enough, riding people off my wheel and getting lost downtown, the headwind blew off the last of my tattered spirit.  I shifted down and once again stared at the edge of my visor as I pedaled .  Slowly.

“Almost home free” I thought as I wheeled onto the last climb having spent the previous 20 minutes in the middle ring, barely pedaling.  I passed a woman heading up the same route “always one killer hill” I said.  ”it’s the top that kills you” she replied and she’s right.  The last couple of meters of the climb to Centre Street get steeper and steeper.  As I crested the hill at the stop sign, I could hear her not far behind me but with a gap in traffic and an overwhelming desire to not be on the bike anymore, I wasn’t waiting around.

I soft-pedaled home, let myself into the yard and stared around trying to figure out what to do.  Put bike away?  Get drink?  Sit down?  Where would I sit?  What would I do with my bike?  Dazed and confused I stood there staring blankly at the yard, happy to be home and not sure what to do about it.

Some observations gleaned from my 83km ride (yes – I hit and marginally exceeded my goal):  

• Despite riding almost daily and logging over 1200km this summer, 80km is still a considerable ride for me.  100km might have actually killed me.
• Lemon-Lime Shot Bloks are very, very sweet.  Tasty once but I don’t think I could have them as the only flavour on a long ride.
• Clif Crunchy Peanut Butter Bar – not so peanut butter…or crunchy.  I’ve not yet determined what it tasted like.  It’s not my favourite.
• I didn’t eat enough on the ride and ate way too much the two days prior.
• Sleep matters – lots and I don’t get nearly enough.
• Despite all of the excuses I made, getting lost-ish, a persistent headwind and a chain squeak that drove me out of my mind the last 25km, I still did it.