Tuesday Trippin’ May 3
The honeysuckle is fragrant. The cottonwood sisters are doing their thing. The temps are warming and the rain has been a little light for gardeners, but just about right for cyclists. The dewberries, they’re blowin’ up all over the trail. Precipitation predictions are for lower than average rainfall over the summer, so there may not be much fruit. Maintenance crews use enough chemicals that I wouldn’t eat them from trailside or roadside anyway. You never know what chemicals they used nor how long ago.
On my last ride crews were cutting the grass, weeds, and lots of fresh green poison ivy. They’re nice and careful. They usually disengage the blades when passing trail users, but there was still enough debris blowing around that I pulled my shirt up over my face while passing and washed really well as soon as I got home.
I’ve reached a point in training where I need to convert over to those recovery walks I said we were going to do instead of recovery rides. I’m at a cross training failure point where people who might see me walk up the mountain could be skeptical as to how many miles I can actually ride now. That’s not all because of the difference between flat railways beds with little change in elevation and climbing a steep slope.
Remember all those times you were told that walking uses over 200 muscles back in school? Well, when you search on the number of muscles used for cycling instead, you don’t get a number. You get names. That’s because there are few enough muscles involved that it’s reasonable to name them instead of just counting them. It’s time for my recovery exercise to start using different muscles.
It’s been a pretty decent week, I’ve dragged at times and I’m adjusting my nutrition for the long haul. I’ll talk about that another week.
My mother had a fall and spent some time in the nursing home. We visited her twice on that trip we mentioned in early April, and will be going back down for Mother’s Day weekend, so next week may be a little light, but we expect to submit the Kickstarter very soon. The video isn’t perfect, but it wasn’t going to be. Russ learned a few cool techniques though and it has more features than I expected, so we’re pretty psyched.
Until then, have a glorious day and we’ll see you on the trail.
