Biking is a Breeze...If You Can Dodge the Traffic!

I finally found something I really like about AR!! Last night we had our first bike practice and I really liked it. I'm so relieved. After the whole kayaking thing, I was considering giving up on all this nonsense. I mean, I already work out 4 days a week on my own and now I've added 2 additional days, so do I really need this? But I promised myself I would give it a try, so here I am stuck deciding what to do. Then, last night I really had fun!

I have this cheap bike from Target and I was really worried that the extreme adventure racers would make fun of it, but nobody even paid attention to what kind of bike I have, so I was worried for nothing. Getting the bike in my car really is the toughest part of this sport. For those of you that don't know, I bought a car last summer and I am in love with it still! I had had SUV's for like 8 years, so switching to a car was a big deal for me, but I haven't had any issues with it until I had to get my bike in the trunk. And, I know, I could totally get a bike rack on my car, but there are two issues with that: (1) I'm not putting a bike rack on my beloved car and potentially scratching the paint and (2) most bike racks require you to take off the front wheel and store it in the trunk. However, my bike is cheap and doesn't have the quick release on the front wheel, which means that I would be out there with a wrench and channel locks every time I needed to put my bike in the car. Not efficient or safe (I'm not very strong when it comes to tightening things). But, alas, the bike will fit in my trunk if I put the whole back seat down and maneuver it just the right way.

Back to practice...we started by talking about what we'd be doing this season and...yay for me...we will mostly be working on road biking and building strength...not too much trail work. That translates to one out of the four main events that does not include a lot of mud. I did get a little mud on my legs last night, but nothing like the last three practices.

So, we started out riding in the park area, did a time trial, then headed down Memorial Drive. If you do not live in Houston, Memorial Drive is a long stretch of road with a lot of traffic on it. We were on the sidewalk, but had to cross a lot of intersections. Have I ever mentioned that our practices take place in the dark??? Well, they do, so as we headed out, the car traffic was making me really nervous. However, by the time we made our first stop (at Memorial and Shepherd!), I had gotten used to looking and yelling back at the person behind me. I think that might be what really makes me the most nervous. We have to yell back at the people behind us what's going on in front. Like "Clear" if there's not a car in the intersection or "Slowing" or "Stopping" if we are doing that. What if I forget to yell (like I did a couple of times last night) and someone isn't paying enough attention and they get hurt? I would freak out! So, I'm getting a little used to being my brother's keeper on that. We'll see if I can keep that up.

We stopped and worked on going up and down a hill (seriously what is up with these people and hills?!?!?). We'd coast down the hill (I REALLY like that part), then get off our bikes and run up the hill pushing our bikes. Then we rode up some hills. I thought this would be relatively easy. Boy was I wrong! My bike is so cheap that when I change gears it makes this terrible noise and I'm always pretty sure that the chain is falling off. So, originally I was just going to suffer through on hills and not change gears. After the first attempt up a hill, I gave up on that plan and started shifting the gears on any little incline. Turns out the gears do work and the chain isn't falling off! The second lap up the hills was almost easy for me! After that, we headed further down Memorial and turned back around. On the way back, I didn't freak out about the traffic nearly as much...thank goodness because I can worry myself to death. We did our strength exercises, then headed home.

I got to talk to my baby sister on the way home (she's so sweet!) and then got home in time to watch the newest episode of Lost. What is up with that show? It is so confusing that half the time I want to turn it off (seriously, do I not have enough to think about in my own life without worrying about what's going on with these fictionaly characters?), but then I get sucked in and last night I caught myself standing about 18 inches from the TV because I was putting clothes away or something and couldn't tear myself away from the screen to turn around and finish what I was doing! Anyway, I think I'm sucked back in again...uggh!