There’s a bumper-sticker out there — you’ve probably seen it — that says “A bad day golfing is better than a good day working.”* Variants of “golfing” include “fishing,” “shopping,” whatever. What you can’t replace it with is “cycling.”
A great day of cycling can’t be beat, but a bad day sucks. Because a bad day of cycling is work. Hard work. Possibly even work in the rain.
No rain today, but I was just not feeling it. I had intended to ride 90 miles, leisurely going over some mountains on a beautiful day.** Long but doable, I thought. After all, a month ago I did an 80-mile loop from my house to the top of Mount Wachusett and back, and that felt really good. But I ended up turning around after 25 miles.
Don’t get me wrong, the ride had its good parts. Hardly anyone was driving up or down the mountain. It didn’t take as long to ascend as last time, when there was snow and ice on the road. And the descent down Notch Road was smooth and fast. (I learned that if you run into a bumblebee while descending at close to 40mph***, you can see it coming and it kinda stings hurts as it thuds off your chest.) And — even though it killed me a little to see it — I smiled when I saw someone had painted “HILL 1/2 WAY 
” on the shoulder of the big climb a little before where I turned around to trade the last 65 miles of my ride for 15. And at the Mount Greylock SP visitor center, I saw a fellow rider with a Team Type 1 jersey.
But something about today just didn’t work. Maybe it’s because I started by climbing a mountain. Maybe it’s because the route was either all uphill or all downhill with few flat sections. Maybe I got too warm on the way up. Maybe I should have had more breakfast before heading out. Maybe something mechanical was wrong. (I even stopped on the way up the mountain to adjust my brakes, since I thought I could feel them rubbing the rear tire.)
Maybe it was one of those things. Maybe it was nothing but my overall lack of skills. Maybe it was all in my head. Whatever the reason, I felt like I had an anchor dragging behind my bike. It felt like the energy I was putting into the bike didn’t move it forward as much as it should, and when I was going slowly (which was often) the bike seemed to slow down on its own.
If the bike was misbehaving — and I’m not saying that it was, although it definitely needs a tune-up — it was mostly me. I just had no energy. I ate and drank, but it didn’t seem to matter. I had cracked. In fact, I contemplated walking my bike the last half mile up the 10% stretch back to the car. I’ve never walked a bike since I first got one with multiple gears. Like I said, it was a tough outing; and I consoled myself with a strawberry shake.
Tomorrow is another day. And since I didn’t go very far today, it might just be tomorrow.
* — This bolsters my (admittedly very biased) assertion that golf is not a sport. At least not any more than billiards or darts. And yet golf is going to be an Olympic sport in 2016, while cricket continues to be excluded. Hmm.
** — I think this ride is jinxed. Two weeks ago, there was a gale/nor’easter that kept me at home. Last week I forgot about a dinner date. And then today. But I declare this: “Taconic Range, I will make you my bitch successfully cross over you.”
*** — I know, I know. The speed limit was only 25. I don’t have a computer/speedometer, so I’m guesstimating. BTW, I’m sure the bee was fine. . . .
i cannot believe that you don’t have a computer/speedometer. even i have one!
What can I say? When you’re trying to convince someone to let you spend more than $1,200 on a bike and then turn around and spend even more to buy new shorts and jerseys and shoes and pedals and bottles and stuff to go with it, the bike computer seems easy enough to put off until later.