On the weekdays when I go out on the bike, I never see many other cyclists out. I see about one cyclist every other day and also get run down by the same FedEx and UPS drivers every day. I wonder why the population of a small neighborhood in the area of about 15 square miles gets FedEx and UPS every day. Maybe it’s drugs…
The weekends are different: there are gobs of cyclists out on the back roads, making it seem like a highway of bikes. A few years ago, it was never like that. I wonder where they all come from. I’m sure some of them get up really early on the weekdays, but I think a lot of people drive from Hampton/Newport News and Richmond to get out of the more populated areas. There’s no way all those people actually live around here. On an average weekend in Virginia Beach, I never see anywhere near that many cyclists.
With the exception of running into Adam out in the middle of nowhere a few weekends ago, I just ride by myself. It’s a rare occasion that someone else comes along that goes along with me for awhile, so when they do, I take advantage of it and try to get them to get up and go. There was a guy last week that sat on my wheel for awhile, but didn’t really make any effort to take over. Adam was in a whole other league when I rode with him, and really put the hurt on me up a couple of hills.
When someone comes up on me, it’s kind of unnerving. It always happens when I’m just tooling along with not much else around but some farms. They sneak up without me hearing or seeing a thing. I’ll be looking out at the road ahead or just thinking about something when suddenly there’s a “ker-chunk” from someone right behind me shifting gears. I just about jump out of my skin. Then comes the typical greeting from the other person, though sounding friendly, really means: “I’m about to kick your ass.” That means it’s time to go.
Today a girl came up on me on a triathlon bike and did that, scaring the crap out of me as usual. I got on her wheel when she passed me and then overtook her again going up a couple hills. Unfortunately, she didn’t stay with me for long, but I have a feeling it’s because she didn’t want to, not because she couldn’t keep up.
Mainly I just bike for the fun of it, not to really punish myself. I did that with running for ten years, so right now I’m just out to have fun. But, now I’m starting to miss that competition that existed just from running with others on a daily basis. I got a new pair of running shoes this week and was planning on running after one of my rides, but time has been a bit of a limiting factor with the paper I’m working on. Today with really hauling butt for about 30 minutes in the middle of the ride, I was completely wiped to do anything more, but at this point I’m just making excuses. I think just running again with some of my old teammates is enough of a motivating factor to get me to start running again. I get asked by someone every week when I’ll start again. I’ve had several professors even ask me.
I said earlier that I wanted to be running by the summer. Time is getting tight. It’s time to get out of my comfort zone again.
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