Better Late Than Never

Working title, perhaps, for Saturdays 209km ride, "A Mere Two-Hundred," from Liberty, MO. to Avenue City, MO. and back.  What a great ride; and MAN, how comfortable a booth at Perkins can feel after a day in the saddle.

After last summer and my long hiatus from riding after rotator-cuff repair on my left shoulder, aside from my successful run at "Archie Bunker" back in December, well, it feels really good to be back in the game.  I haven't really been riding much, not even commuting - mainly the result of a mind over weather failure.  We've had a dry, but cold, winter; no real excuses not to ride long other than the thought of enduring the cold itself not sounding like much of a good time.  Once out of a habit, it's very difficult to pick it back up.  The same can be said on diet, where two solid weeks of pain meds and doing essentially nothing, back in July, had turned into a subconscious choice to eat everything not nailed down, despite my affirmations to the contrary before surgery.  From the best shape of my adult life in June last year, to a heap of slack by the end of August.  Yeesh, I fall hard.

I'd even thought about yanking the plug on the blog and social media, also.  I think in some ways missing a summer of riding, my coping mechanisms lifted and facing work and its stresses without much of an outlet, left me a bit depressed in a clinical sense: unmotivated, giving up or showing a lack of interest in the activities I enjoy, and somehow restored to both, as if I'd determined and accepted the outcome and couldn't be bothered to question why.  Seems legit, as my son might say with tongue in cheek.

Yet, even unloading some of that here, in a few hundred words so far, I feel a small sense of renewal.  Spring showed up about this time last weekend, and I have taken to riding to work again - and preferring it over driving, as before.  I have been back in the gym for a couple months now, and while my body weight isn't where I'd like it yet, inches are gone, and core strength has transformed my riding already.  I felt strong, engaged, and able to push and dictate my own pace, instead of struggling to stay latched to a wheel.  Something has been working, and my level cruising speed is up a few notches.

This will be a good year, I can feel it.

I'll go ahead an call this a new streak:  I'm confident.

So, the ride? 

Well, that post is in the works.
Seems I still like to write about these things, too.  Maybe the break did me some good.

Stay tuned. . .