Kick in the Pants!

It’s a little old but it needs to be talked about. The past weekend, we went out for a leettle bike ride. By leettle, I mean 30 freaking miles!! And by “we”, I mean the one and only… JohnnyTri!

JT e-mailed me a little while back and mentioned that he wanted to go for an easy bike ride. Like a dumba$$, I jumped at the chance. Nevermind the fact that I have never done 30 miles before. Nevermind the fact that JT is training for IM-CDA and Rage(Half) and Half-Ironman Switzerland; nevermind the fact that he has calf muscles the size of my head and is built like a Greek god (Women swoon at the mere mention of his name!).

No! Despite all these overwhelming facts, I decided to ride.

Now this could have been a perfect ride. He wanted to stay easy, L1 and L2. RIGHT! Leave it to me to F@ck that up in no time flat.

Apparently, JT thought I knew what I was doing when he let me plan the bike route.

Unwittingly, I chose the bike path next to my house. It’s a great path completely isolated from traffic with 6 foot wide path. Normally the Mrs. and I ride it every week.

OK...fine...so we ride half of it every week…appearently the easier, flatter, less likely to cause cardiac failure side.

The other side is the not easy, not flat, very likely to cause cardiac failure. Imagine my chagrin, when I take JT out there on a route “I do all the time” only to find that HOLY MOTHER OF GOD…WHO PUT THIS HILL HERE?

Needless to say it was GREAT! The first 15 miles were some of the hardest miles of my life. We reached grades of 10+. I think there was one the almost reached 15, trusty Garmin says 22% but I think Garmin was smokin’ something at the time.

The first 15 made the second 15 all the better as it mellowed out to good smooth climbs but added the exhaustion of having the life sucked out of your bone marrow. GOOD TIMES!

All in all, it was really good. I hung with JT (who slowed down to a crawl a few times to wait for me, thank you very much!).

Final time for this jaunt out into the hills was 2:13:39. That makes for a whopping…..13.4 mph!

Look out Tour de Farce! I’m only one sponsor away. (Miller?; Budwieser?; Corona?; Absolute?)

I would like to thank Johnny for slowing down for me. I think that he woulda/coulda/ (probably) shoulda been about 6 miles ahead of me at any given moment and therefore would have a much more impressive mph.

I’d also like to thank my lovely wife, who in a moment of weakness let me talk her into a ride and went with me the DAY BEFORE the 30 mile ride to “test the legs”. Apparently 13 miles and 10% grade does not make a fresh pair of legs!

And finally I’d like to thank the little people. Not for any reason other than I’ve always wanted to thank them. You know who you are! (Good. Cause I don’t)