So I’m running a Ragnar relay race in Cape Cod this weekend. My friend Meredith and I started talking about it last fall; hard to believe it’s finally here!
Tonight after work, our team of 12 (plus two drivers) will load into two huge-ass vans and make our way up there. I seriously don’t know how all of our gear is going to fit into two vans: When you have to bring clothes to wear for three legs of running, plus clothes for lounging in the vans, plus blankets, pillows, and towels, plus stuff to cover up your stench from three legs of running with no showers in between…
Packing for Ragnar is more intense than packing for a marathon!
My alarm went off this morning, and I considered just going back to sleep. The Ride to Montauk isn’t for another two months, so, I reasoned, there’s no real rush to start riding yet. Last summer I completed the Ride after having my bike only two weeks. Okay, so that was a ROUGH experience, and I’d like to be much more ready for it this year and be able to enjoy it more. Yet even if I waited for mid-May to ride again, I thought, I’d still be doubling my training time!
The hesitation wasn’t because I was tired or lazy. It was because I was scared. I hadn’t been on a bike in eight months, and also, despite the fact that I finished that 100-miler last June, I really haven’t ridden enough to be totally comfortable with it yet. But I told myself to grow a pair: Whether I rode this morning or waited for another morning a week or month from now, I’d still be scared… might as well get it over with now.
So I got up and got dressed and left. Going down the steps with the bike propped against my shoulder, I seriously felt nervous. I told myself, though, the worst that would happen was I’d fall and look like an idiot (and/or get hit by a car; I vowed to pay extra attention to traffic). I did end up looking like an idiot, but not because I fell… When walking out the front of my apartment building, I got stuck between the two doors. The first door closed, and then there wasn’t enough space to open the second. I tried to lift my bike on its back wheel to make room and was fumbling around like a moron when my neighbor walked up behind me and helped me out. Lucky for me, he’s a nice guy and we laughed about it.
Finally I was off and managed to cross the West Side Highway without falling or getting run over. Score! For a second, I had to think about how to switch gears (um, yeah, it’d been eight months). But pretty quickly, I felt pretty comfortable. And very quickly realized I’d forgotten how much more cycling works your quads than running does—apparently even when you’re on flat ground, like I was this morning. I rode about 10 lovely miles along the Hudson—no that far, but it was all I had time for.
Now I just have to prepare myself to ride 10 times that far. Gulp.
It was very hard to get up this morning. Outside was gray and foggy, and my bed was cozy. But a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad thought about putting on a bikini in just a few months popped into my head—yikes—and I no longer could deny the fact that I needed to go for a run. So I pulled myself out of bed, pulled on clothes, and got in a quick 3.5 miles (fueled by Robyn and old-school Britney).
I’m lucky enough to leave work in time this afternoon to catch the second half of Missouri’s first game in the tournament, against Norfolk State, and I’m stoked—and accessorized accordingly:
GO TIGERS!!!
