Of Riding and Whining

The past few days have been kind of a blur. We finished up our trip in Missouri on Saturday and headed back to Michigan on Sunday morning. We got a chance to ride the Lake Wappapello Trail again on Saturday before we left, and what started out as a really crappy ride turned out okay in the end.

I'll admit my attitude was bad from the beginning of the ride. We had gone into town and had lunch and ran a couple of errands before heading out to the trail in the late afternoon. I was not motivated to ride and changing into my riding clothes in a somewhat chilly parking lot didn't help.

We started riding and everything seemed to go wrong from the beginning. My helmet, which apparently doesn't fit very well, though I never really noticed it when I first bought it, seemed worse than usual. It kept sliding down over my eyes and I felt like I was pushing it up about every three seconds. The headache that had started the night before and had gone away after breakfast came back with a vengeance as soon as I hit the trail. My legs felt like lead for the first ten minutes or so and I ended up pushing my bike up many more hills than should have been necessary. When I crashed early on, instead of getting up right away, I stayed on the ground for a while and just cried, even though it didn't particularly hurt. I came really close to just turning around and going back to the car.

I didn't do that though. I plugged along, we ended up riding a little farther than we had on Thursday and were rewarded right before we turned around to ride back with a pretty view of the sun sinking down toward Lake Wappapello. By the time we got back to the car my spirits had improved considerably.

So to wax philosophical for just a minute, let me say that there's one thing about mountain biking that I like more than anything else—being done. I know that sounds bad, or at least sounds like I'm not having much fun out there, but that's not really what I mean. I do have fun when I'm out on the trail, not always, but mostly. But the best feeling is standing at the car taking the wheel off my bike, feeling sweaty and tired and like I accomplished something. I don't know if it's hormonal or what, but it feels great. When I have that feeling it seems like it doesn't really matter what happens for the rest of day. I can say it was a success.

Note: Whiny blurb to follow. On that positive note, it's time to get a little negative for a minute. I'm feeling very overwhelmed right now. I have to go back to work tomorrow after a long break and I feel like I didn't get much accomplished, nor did I get much rest while I was gone. The trip to Missouri had some bright spots, but was somewhat depressing since we were helping put one of Chris' grandmas in a nursing home and clean out her house. The drive home seemed twice as long as the one down there and when it started snowing when we got back into Michigan, I just about lost it.

Yesterday I wasn't motivated to do anything except go pick the puppies up from the kennel and veg with them all day. Not that that's completely bad because I missed them and some QT was in order. However, I was supposed to ride and that didn't get done. I asked Chris if he wanted to try to ride outside and he mumbled some negative response so I never brought it up again. We got dumped on with snow last night, so it looks like riding the trail is out today. I thought I should take advantage of the fact that we actually have snow to take the girls out and use my snowshoes, but I'm even having trouble getting motivated to do that. I'm going to have to do something soon though, because my recovery week is over.