Hot cheese! Hot cheese!

Well, for “cheese,” substitute “pavement,” “air,” and “everything else” and you’ve got a sense of what it’s like here today. 90 degrees (that’s 32 for my Canadian friends) is not my milieu, and we’re headed there for the third day in a row. This is supposed to be my training week for the Tour de Cure in two days, but a lot of things have gotten in the way this year, not least of which is that for the first time I’m en forme and really not feeling the pressure. But normally I do a long long ride on Tuesday, which got slid over into a long ride on Wednesday, and because of sleep issues and other logistics, I ended up bagging yesterday. I can’t ride both hot and tired. So this morning as soon as Bek was on the bus, I took off for Best.

In the first 25 minutes, I was already quitting Sunday’s ride. I was actually imagining myself going to the registration table and turning in my red (50-mile) colors for a yellow (25-mile, or The Ride 8-Year-Olds Can Do). Even thinking about that is a sure sign of bonking. But then the Gatorade started to kick in, and so did a major breeze that turned into sustained wind. Normally I’d have been mad about having to fight the wind, but in fact it brought me back up to my normal levels and I was able to cruise happily for the next hour and a half, and I un-quit Sunday’s ride!

Wouldn’t it be nice to be one of those people who’s only riding the current ride, instead of worrying about the next one? God. What I love about skiing is that it’s only possible to ski the run you’re skiing — I don’t have what it takes to even think about the run after, let alone what’s going to happen two days later. It’s all I can do to keep them between the trees.

Wish me luck!