Yesterday's ride — relatively uneventful. Nice scenery, short hills, good weather.

I ended up messing up my directions and going down Glen Mill instead of the subdivision to the east of it, so needless to say I probably won't make that mistake again… a bit too much traffic for my tastes, not to mention the road is pretty cut up in spots. Still, I ended up doing a bit over 17 miles (MMR mileage is wrong). Pretty good, although at this point in time I'd like to be hitting at least 20 regularly, but I'd rather keep them short and frequent rather than long and once a week.

All I've got to say is thank goodness the MS Ride is in June this year and not May… because if it was, I probably would have to relegate myself to doing the 30 mile route. Let's see, a little more than a month and a half to whip myself into shape to do the metric century — doable, I hope. It's not like I've been sedentary all winter, I've been riding Cass a lot, so my cardiovascular fitness should be a little higher than couch potato level.

So! First ride of the season was last (last) Sunday, as I was away in Utah visiting my parents for the past week. I'm having a bit of an issue plotting out routes that won't destroy my knees with steep hills, which means much of North Arlington, McLean, and Potomac (all which have great biking) are out for a few weeks. Similarly, I've decided that I need to be cautious of where in South Arlington I go, because the drivers there are generally not as mindful as the ones above Route 50 are. DC is limited to weekends, and I've found the risk of getting doored goes up by about 60%. Plus that whole biker getting run over by a garbage truck last year… yeah.

That being said, I think I'm going to actually have to relegate myself to using some of the bike trails until I'm strong enough to tackle the leg 'n lung burners near the barn in Potomac. (Probably might want to stay off River Road if I don't want to get humiliated by the local racers that train there, too. )

Anyway, I managed to plot out a route that worked pretty well — fairly low traffic, not too too many turns, and I only got lost disoriented once. Not a killer workout, but good enough to get the legs workin' again. (And remind me I need to clean my chain.) I think I got around 14-15 miles on my cyclometer thanks to some missed turns, but hey, who cares… I went biking!

The 2009 MS Ride is being held at the beginning of June this year, which gives me a little less than three months to prepare. Last year I considered upping my personal challenge to do the full century, but at the time I wasn't doing my other type of riding: horse.

With Cass back in in the picture, I actually (well, hopefully, barring any significant injuries to either him or myself) might have the chance to compete consistently this year… something I've been trying to do for the past 3 years. The fact that Cass is a much more suitable partner for me than Cody ever was has been a motivation to challenge myself and work harder at becoming a better rider. I really, really want(ed) to compete at Rubicon, but it's on the same weekend as the MS ride. Granted, the metric century is only on Saturday, so technically I can compete Sunday, but I'm not sure if my body can handle that amount of stress.

Right now, my two bikes are sitting in my living room, waiting to have their tires pumped and hit the road. However, I've been avoiding them for three reasons: one, the roads here in Arlington are still covered in salt ; two, I can't make the time; and three, it's still just a little bit cold here.

In a month or so, I won't have an excuse based on temperature or lack of daylight hours. Somehow I need to figure out how to fit Cass and biking in the same day a few times a week. I can [bike] ride in the morning (which would mean getting up at 5 AM or so), go to work, ride Cass after work, and then collapse from exhaustion… but the main concern I have is riding that early in the morning. The alternative is to ride solely on the bike trails, but I have an aversion to them mainly because people on bikes can be more dangerous than cars. The other option is to ride my bike after work and then ride Cass, because we have lights in our ring and I can ride after dark.

I need to be Superwoman, if only for two months…

Okay, so apparently last week's ride wasn't my last ride, after all. I'm not even sure if this past Saturday's ride will be considered the "last ride" of the season, so I think I'll stop dubbing them as final bike rides when they may not be.

Anyway. Went out on a 25 mile "training ride" on Saturday sponsored by the Capital MS Society… that I nearly skipped out on. First off, doing that ride meant getting up early on a Saturday morning. Additionally, the weather report called for showers and fog. Bleh. So, when my alarm blared at 8 AM (hey, that's early for me), I looked outside, saw wet pavement (no rain, though), and said "Screw it," and tried to go back to sleep.

Yeah, easier said than done. 30 minutes later, I'm still awake. I grumble at my conscience for ruining my attempt to sleep in and finally haul my butt out of bed to ride down to Courthouse. Fortunately, the weather cleared up and the pavement was dry by the time I got there, so my original "excuse" was no longer valid.

The ride itself was fun, I'm glad I ended up going. The autumn leaves were out in full force and looked beautiful… a.k.a. nice and distracting, since there were many many many hills to climb. Since it was somewhat of a smaller group, there wasn't as much bunching-up/riding 3 abreast trend that I hate with group rides… not to say that everyone rode single file and obeyed all traffic rules.

Route is below, although the little section down by miles 12-13 is a little weird — I don't exactly remember cutting through 5 backyards to return to Lincoln Ave. I'm not sure what my total mileage was, probably closer to 30 with the commute to/from Courthouse… still a lot for my weak little legs.

Off to the gym to pedal 30 minutes to nowhere. Only 117 days left until daylight savings time begins again.

This is going to be a long one… bear with me here.

I have got to fix this late issue I have. Every time I have to be in Loudoun County, I always end up having to "one more thing," and end up leaving 20 minutes later than I intended to. So, as a result, I got to Franklin Park in Purcellville/Round Hill at around 7:14, and our team photo was scheduled for 7:15. Crap. Ah well, not a huge deal as I was the only one who wasn't wearing a team jersey. (D'OH! I forgot to pick mine up before leaving work on Friday.)

Anyway, I also managed to miss the "grand start" of the ride as I had to run back to the car to get my cell phone and cue sheet. I finally hit the road around 8:15 since I my sweet old time trying to pin my number on my jersey. (I finally just took off my jersey to pin it on… hopefully no one was blinded by the sheer whiteness of my torso.)

Best of all, when I put on my helmet, I realized that I completely forgot to replace the liner that I had taken out to wash the night before. Ouch. So the first 8 miles of the ride were spent with scratchy velcro digging into my forehead. (I remedied the situation at the first rest stop by folding some tissue over it.)

The suckier part about starting late is that you end up stuck behind the slower riders. (On the flip side, if you start right in front, you end up getting smoked by the spoke jocks and other overachievers.)

As I rode along, it occurred to me that many people cannot ride their bikes safely, and it really pisses me off. They ride double/triple, swerve all over the road, don't signal, don't say "passing" or "on your left," and (my favorite of all), don't look behind them before trying to pass another biker. You wouldn't change lanes on a highway without checking your mirror and blind spot, would you? It's pretty damn stupid to do something like that when there could be another car or mute biker (e.g., silent passer) right behind you. It's these sort of riders who give bicyclists a bad name to irate drivers… e.g., it gives anti-biker drivers ammo to not respect the riders who do follow the rules. As my dear dad says, "If you want respect, you have to give respect."

Okay, rant over. The route was absolutely beautiful, the weather was perfect, and overall it was just wonderful.

Then, disaster struck.

I was chatting with some of the Babes on Bikes ladies and made the ever-so-stupid remark that my bike was "working really well" (aka, chain was not falling off). Five minutes later, as we're going uphill, I go to shift down to my inner ring on the front, and hear "Clunk!" I say, "Oh man, my chain fell off!"

Then one of the BoB gals looks back and says, "Whoa, your chain broke!"

Oh SNAP!

Literally.

[A quick background for the non-biking crowd. Normally a chain is put on a bike by taking out a pin with a special tool and then reinserting it. I had replaced the chain with a Wippermann chain, which has a special link that eliminates the need for removing a pin every time you want to take off your chain. It's pretty handy, except when said link decides to jump ship as you're riding the bike!]

I jump off and trot back down the hill looking for the link. No luck, as something that's small, grey, and black is virtually impossible to find in gravel/asphalt.

At this point, I'm thinking, "Well crap. I'm totally screwed unless I can come up with an extra Connex link." Then I reflect back on a conversation I had with my dad a few months ago:

Me: "Dad, I replaced the rear cassette and put on a Wippermann chain as you recommended. That Connex link is really neat! Although I should probably buy an extra one in the unlikely event that my chain comes apart while I'm on the road."

Famous. Last. Words.

Fortunately, someone came up and had a chain removal tool, and we remedied the situation by removing a link to connect the two ends together. Chain fixed, I continued on my merry way.

[Side note: I'm a little ticked off at Spokes Etc., as they were the last people to handle the chain. When I brought it in on Wednesday to have two of the chainrings replaced, they shortened the chain to accommodate the new, smaller inner ring. Ergo, they put it on wrong or I had a defective chain. More likely the former.]

I caught up with the rest of the Booz Allen team at lunch in The Plains. Corner Bakery catered the lunch, and it was gooooood. We also had a nice bluegrass-type band playing for us while we sat and ate. We were told that the rest of the ride was much more difficult than the first half, with more hills. I'm thinking, "Oh great, and up until now I thought it was pretty easy!" I kept my mouth shut with that comment as there were many many riders on the ride who ended up walking up basically every hill. Including the dude who was clearly a triathlete, or at least a wannabe triathete.

Turns out it wasn't as bad as I thought. The only bad climbs were off downhill runs, as some riders would slow down so much that I'd have to brake and kill all my momentum since I couldn't pass due to the line of cars behind us. Better safe than end up as a hood ornament.

I stopped by two friends' farms as they were both on the route. Jan wasn't home, but I stayed at Melanie's for about half an hour while we caught up. It was a nice break/rest as the next section was basically down, down, then up. And up again.

The last 9 miles were also nice as they consisted of only the W&OD with a stiff tailwind. I rolled into the fairgrounds around 4, checked my cyclometer, and was pleased to see I had finished the 67 miles in under 5 hours. And I felt really, really good – not tired at all, as if I could do another 20 miles.

Overall, a very good day.

Updated route:

I had 66.something miles on my cyclometer, which may stem from the fact I put about an extra mile or so going up and down Mel's long driveway.