This past week of training in Prescott, AZ, was just this side of blissful. Makes returning home to Chicago feel like punishment for having done something sinful. But, if that is the equation I'm all up for a future of wanton sin and wickedness!
I"m adding links to some of the Garmin data for three of my training rides. What a delight to ride right out my front door, climbing three or four 15% grades and just as many 9% grades just to get to the open mountain and desert roads with sedate 6% - 8% grades as common.
Although I enjoyed the chance to ride the Airborne Ti Zeppelin upright road bike and confirm that I'm no less fit or capable on it than I have been for so many years in the past ... the difference between it and the recumbents was emphatic.
After two or three days of scrunching over the handlebars, craning my neck to see ahead of me, having a death grip on the handlebars lest I hit a bump and go flying off a mountain road ... no comparison. I missed my recumbents. Also, I noticed that I was slower on the upright bike. Slower going UP the hills and much, much slower going DOWN the hills.
I'm glad I can endure hours and mile after mile of pain and suffering that the road bike permits me. But my ego no longer requires proof that I have veritable world class capacity for self-abuse. Hell! I learned that countless times over the course of my life.
Agreed! Confirmed! I'm head and shoulders above all of mankind in terms of capacity for agonizing self torture. My conclusion? I'm a blockheaded slow learner who needed multiple demonstrations that I'm expert at pain and suffering and better than every other soul on earth at it. (Thank you, orthodox religious indoctrination institutions in my youth!!!)
If I lived in the middle ages I'd aspire to becoming a saint by being burned at the stake just to show others I could do it. For that matter, I'd try to survive being burned at the stake just so they'd give me a wack at the `rack.' Or, a chance to be hung upside down and shot through and through with arrows. Or, nailed to a cross and left on a hill to die a slow agonizing death. Or, ... or.... or.....
So, here are some of the Garmin links.
Just so's you all know ... if I were on the bent I could have doubled and tripled the mileage! Easily.
March 25
March 27
March 28
As a former roadie,nothing but insane rides,day after day,week after week,month after month,,year after year.I was rear ended.destroying my lower spine.Loving the suffering.I continues to ride my road bike.600 miles this year after the accident and its just may!Well,I just ordered my first front wheel drive recumbent.After a few weeks of rest after the surgery.I will hit the road again.Man,I wish I could ride with you one day,we could call it the day of great suffering lol.For I am Riderr,No hill or mountain ever caused me to stop and rest.Why?because,There is No finish line
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