I travel by bike

After Saturday's disappointing and painful crit (in which I found myself sliding by way of butt cheek down a steep hill on the rain-slicked streets of Wilmington, DE) I hauled my achin' butt out of bed and back on the bike again at 10am the next morning setting out to ride to our next host house in Somerset, New Jersey. I needed about 6.5 hours of ride time so the 100 miles to get there would actually be a little short, but I'd worry about that if and when we actually made it to the house that was two states over.

A mere 2 hours in I found myself on the outskirts of Philadelphia and damn near cracked. Contributing factors to my mental breakdown:

- The route consisted of something like 127 turns.... I swear it never felt like we were on any road for longer than 0.3 miles.

- We were navigating with David's Garmin and, as is expected with his slightly spastic nature, we'd get into a conversation (i.e. he'd start freely spilling random info into my ear, and I would nod) and would forget to look down at the GPS. I'm gonna estimate that we missed 15 turns. And the GPS takes around 10 minutes to recalculate after each of those mistakes. It felt like we were riding blind most of the time.

- I was 2 flats deep and out of tubes.

- There were at least 3 or 4 holes in the tire with shimmering bits of glass or metal sticking out. And they were laughing at me.

- I don't know if you've ever been in the area, but there's no such thing as a nice, quiet country road between Wilmington and Philly. There are entirely too many people, too much developed land, and too many stop lights. And they're all red. All the time.

- David's response for all of the slow traffic lights and neighborhoods we encountered was to sprint from a stand still after every light. And up every hill. I don't do that.

- For the first two hours it seems like I rode next to David for a total of about 15 minutes. Other than that he was either pedaling 75 watts, messing with the Garmin or doing 500 up some hill. If I had had the slightest clue where I was, I would have ditched him in a heartbeat during that first 2 hours.

Philly took care of all my problems. Directed by 4 swole frat dudes to the nearest bike shop and then escorted there by a friendly Philly bike commuter, I restocked on tubes and replaced my shit rear tire with a new one for a whopping $15. Leaving the shop I still felt a little bummed that we'd only ridden about 2 out of the last 3 hours since we'd left Wilmington. Soon enough we were amongst the action of traffic, sky scrapers, restaurants, and people of downtown Philadelphia, and for some reason I got really excited. Being in an urban setting while I was trying to train would have pissed me off any other day, but I had pretty much already thrown the idea of "training" out the window for the day. Now I was in tourist mode. "I've never been to Philly, I neeeeeed a cheese steak!!!!" After luring David into the idea by offering to pay for his cheese steak, we did it. Got a loaded hoagie from a street vendor, hijacked patio chairs from some fancy shmancy restaurant and started enjoying the day.

Something clicked and my motivation was unbreakable after that. We got into a rhythm and started training for real. We ran every red light for the next 80 miles. It started raining.... who cares. Almost just got hit by that car.... eh, whatever.

We squeezed out 90 minutes of harder than necessary tempo at the end and even rode extra after we got to Somerset because we weren't done with the workout. I didn't ride a second less than 6.5 hours which was a huge success mentally. All year I've lacked the sometimes overly-motivated mentality that brought me success last year. It's almost back, and I desperately need it.