Behind the eight ball

It's been a heck of a week for getting my hours in. It's Thursday, and I have a whopping 4hrs so far...and I'm supposed to log 9.5 for the week. You do the math. It has been so friggin' hot that I've not really been that motivated to go out for 2 or more hours in one shot. I think I'm gonna have to do some 2-a-days for the remainder of the week.

Today was a great ride. Joe and I rode to the town of DeFuniak Springs so he could drop some papers off to his wife. We were supposed to meet her at 6:45pm, which would give us about an hour's worth of daylight to get back to the car. It shouldn't have been a problem. It took us just over 50 minutes to get there, so the return trip should not have been a problem...but you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men. She didn't show, and didn't show. After numerous attempts to reach her on her cell phone, we find out that she had just gotten off work and was at least 45 min away from DeFuniak. It was 7:15. There's no decision to be made...we can't wait, we've got to roll.

It was gonna be up to me to set the pace that would get us back before it was totally dark. The terrain is rolling, and while the hills are not long, they're steep. On the way out, I had dropped Joe on the first climb, and he didn't catch back on until I stopped to wait for him.This is why I was gonna have to do the bulk of the work.

The first couple of hills I'm not doing well, I feel like I'm bogging down. At this point Joe is hanging right there with me and I'm glad that one of us is feeling good, cause we're gonna need someone to get us back fast. A few minutes later and my legs come around. We're on of the longer climbs and I didn't really realize that I had done it, but I made an acceleration, and I heard Joe make a weird sound. I thought he had made a bad shift and was grumbling over it. I later learned that sound I heard was him cracking. I had a good gap on him over the hills, and when I hit some flat ground I slowed my pace for him to catch back on.

Once he was back on I kicked it into overdrive and let him hold my wheel. I don't know if it was the motivation of not wanting to get stuck out on the road in the middle of nowhere with it being pitch black or what, but I was cruising. I was like Superman. It's the kind of day that you hope to have come race day.

Ohh, and even though it's been since 2005 that Joe last competed, I am going to relish the satisfaction of cracking a Semi-pro.

Now, if you'll excuse me...between bouts of gloating, I've got to figure out how I'm gonna get 5.5hrs of riding in between tomorrow and Sunday.