This last week our daughter Darlene has been a life saver. She volunteered to stay with her mother so I could get out and take a break now and then.
She came and stayed with Carolyn Monday while I started training for a bicycle tour on June 2. The weather hasn’t been cooperating, but it is beginning to look like summer has arrived, finally.
Monday morning I rode 12.1 miles from my house to Carl Albert Park, then past the Durant High School then on to Armstrong, OK. From there I turned south on Sawmill road. It is the perfect road for bicycle shift training. It is a series of hills just steep enough to take you clear down to #1 gear going up and then shifting up to #24 gear on the downslopes.
The cable stretched to the front shifter so it wouldn’t quite shift into the top gear wheel on the crank, so I had to complete that shift by pulling on the cable where it comes across the transverse bar between my legs. I am going to have to adjust that one before the big tour.
I had no pain or trouble on that run Monday. My legs felt just fine, I had no pain in heart or lungs, although I was breathing hard and sweating like crazy. I actually felt good after I got back to take a hot shower, and change into some dry clothes.
Today I took a longer route, hoping to build up to the tour June 2, which has a 67 mile loop as well as several shorter ones. They have changed the routes since I signed up several weeks ago, and I found out why today. Originally the loops all went north on Hwy. 78 and came back south on Hwy. 48. The new loops dodge all but the first few miles of Hwy. 48, where there is a wide shoulder.
The rest of Hwy. 48 is built on a levee like a railroad, with no shoulder at all, and a 45º slope off both sides into a deep ditch. Also, there is a gravel pit north of Kenefic and there is a steady string of huge semi trucks hauling gravel to construction sites south of Durant. When one of these trucks comes by, the only safe thing to do is veer off the road down the slope toward the ditch.
Luckily for me, I am riding a mountain bike, so I had the option of cutting down the slope, turning halfway down and stopping on the side slope. The maddening part is if I didn’t have time to get downshifted, I had to push the bike back up to the road, then hold up the back wheel and get shifted down to a lower gear so I could get going again.
My route today was north to Kenefic, east to Caddo, then southwest back to Armstrong and Durant. Total distance was 30 miles. That was about ten miles too far. I started fading just before Armstrong. I pulled over under a big shade tree on Main Street and drank the last of my water. Then I rode up the hill to the cutoff to Old Armstrong Road. It is also a series of hills, and my legs had turned to rubber.
I gave up trying to pedal up the hills and just got off and walked, leaning a little too heavily on my bicycle. I was getting pretty wobbly. On the downhills I crawled onto the bike and coasted to the bottom, finally enjoying the wind in my face, as it had been since Caddo ten miles back.
I turned left at North First Street and alternately rode and walked to University Drive, where I decided to turn right and walk up the sidewalk. I was feeling a little faint, and was worried I might actually fall over and hurt myself. I found some concrete steps up into a building on the Southeastern Oklahoma University campus and parked my bike and sat on the steps in the shade for a few minutes.
I had been planning to push the bike to 6th Ave, which is one way with one lane for bicycles and is steeply downhill all the way to my house, but the lady in my Garmin GPS recommended I turn on 4th Ave instead. (The house is on 5th Ave, but it’s one way the wrong way). I found 4th is level for the couple of blocks down to Plum, so I soon was sitting in front of a fan, drinking water and eating about four little Halo oranges for energy.
Even after a hot shower and dry clothes I feel wiped out. A little of that may be due to inadequate sunscreen protection. My arms look pretty red this evening. Gotta get that SPF number pushed up higher, I guess.
The moral of this story is an old cliché - I bit off more than I could chew. I’m going to take a couple of days off to regrow some more leg muscle, and then try to find a shorter training route for the next training run.
I got back to Featherstone to see Carolyn and Darlene about 3:00 PM and found Carolyn in bed. Darlene said she ate about half her lunch and then asked to lie down. She woke up around 4:30 hungry, so Darlene helped me change her - much easier with two people - and we wheeled her into the dining room for dinner.
We left to see if she could feed herself - some days yes, some days no - and about 5:30 we went to see if she needed any help. Well no, she had eaten most of what she wanted, and had invented a new concoction, sweet tea float. They had ice cream for dessert, and she had poured some of her sweet tea into the bowl and stirred it around and was tipping up the bowl and sipping it. She has not lost her creativity, or her sense of humor. When I asked what she had, she just looked at me and giggled.
It’s been a good day overall. Some look at me quizzically when I tell them how far I rode my bicycle today. I’ve been thinking about it, and I came up with a new rule.
At this age, almost 75, I have two choices. I can sit down in an easy chair, stop moving and wait for the doctor to declare me dead. Or I can get up, move as fast and far as I can, and try to keep ahead of that dang doctor.
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