First bike ride

The first bike ride of the season is like the first day of school. I face it with a mixture of anticipation and dread, mostly dread.

Spring has been late but today is lovely, my work is done, and I have no excuses. It’s time to take to the hills. Sunday afternoon it was really warm and Vic and I planned to go for a ride. But he had to finish something on his computer as he always does so I started cleaning the porch and then it got really hot, maybe 85, and windy, and I was tired by the time the porch was clean so that was that.

I don’t know why it’s hard to start the biking season. Maybe because I know the first ride is going to be hard. My knees will ache, my butt will kill, I’ll huff and puff up the hills, I’ll have to avoid an entirely new set of patches and potholes.

Then there’s the matter of finding the gear, nothing new and spiffy like the new plaid dress and box of number 2 pencils that used to go with the first day of school, just stuff scattered by the forces of entropy that reign in closets and garages. Pull the biking shorts over the bulges, dig out a long-sleeved tee because it’s sunny but only 55, extract the helmet from the back of the coat closet shelf. And why is there only one bike shoe on the rack? And where is my favorite water bottle?

My little blue hybrid has been languishing in the garage for months. Doing nothing, her tires have managed to lose pounds and pounds. I wish I could say the same for myself. I pump her up. We roll carefully down the drive, swing out onto the road and down and up the first hills.

By the time we round the corner onto Oak Forest, I remember why I bike. Wind and sun on my face, brand new green grass and the first leaflings on trees. The hills aren’t so bad; I get up them with a few gears to spare. I glimpse migrating ducks on the marshy pond across the stateline but I’m going downhill too fast to stop and look. For most of the ride, though, I take my time. I pushed myself enough just to get this start on the biking season.

I promised myself a few months ago, when it was all hypothetical, that I would train for a century this year. That’s a 100-mile bike ride in a day. I’ve done two but not for a while. The late September Apple Cider Century winds through our neighborhood. It is, in fact, how we discovered this woods-farm-orchard-vineyard territory of southwest Michigan some 20 years ago.

I’m not saying one way or another, not yet. I’ve got 5 months. I’ve just done my first 10 miles. My butt is sore but not as sore as it will be after my second ride because it takes a good week to acquire the necessary numbness. It takes many miles a week to toughen the legs and the willpower. But once you start rolling it isn’t bad at all, not at all.