I Had A Thought...

So I had a thought, which is something I've been trying not to do lately. My head is generally in this stated of thinly disguised agony over all of the thinking I've been doing about wheels and data and data about wheels and why so many people try so hard to package their data in a way that makes it all at once phenomenally impressive and profoundly useless to the audience. There are other things that I have to think about. The rest of it, I've got it pretty squarely on autopilot.

Anyhow, my thought, as I was doing the training that I'm currently trying not to think about, is that the problem with racing cross is that it's fun and short. Coming out of that makes vague and long a little challenging. 5 to 6 hours on the bike over the course of a weekend is a lot, especially when you don't have a whole ton of specificity about it. Ride, but not too hard. Training during cross season is either painfully, well, painful, or mercifully and necessarily short. Once you actually nut up and get going, it's over so fast that you haven't got time or space to think.

Base might be as physically challenging as making you tired, and when I got home on Saturday after 3 hours I was certainly tired, but there's no "oh dear sweet baby Jesus how am I ever going to do THAT?!?!?!?" You're just... tired. The dear sweet baby Jesus moment comes when you realize that you're going to be something close to bored for kind of a long time.

This winter, so far, I've ridden with more people more often. This comes down to having found a good group to train with. Saturday's plan had been to do the 10am to Travilah, let the dog off the chain a little bit with that part of it but not enough and not long enough to really go deep, and then top that with solid pace base miles. Unfortunately I have not actually been paying attention to when the ride leaves the last few times, and I missed it. After doing an hour at a very solid tempo clip, I hadn't caught the ride. If you're 4 minutes behind that thing to start, your chances of getting it pretty much vanish, but chasing it for as long as I did was a good mental operation, and it was nice to be able to do a reasonably not pathetic effort for a while there.

Sunday was a ride with a group. People who either know how to do base with other people, or don't know how not to do base with other people.

I haven't had a beer or any other alcohol since the first of the year. Crazy. It's a very simple thing to do, you only have to set the default to "not beer" instead of "beer." Instead of choosing to have a beer, you just don't choose to have a beer. This is not the same thing as choosing not to have a beer.

I would like to ride someplace with big hills soon. Hills are good. I like hills.