Things are still very up in the air with 12 Hours of Nite Nationals. Not only did I discover that it’s an Auburn football weekend (if you don’t live in the South, you may not realize how psychotic the college football fans are down here), I rode a while yesterday, and my legs were pretty junky. Luckily, both the weather and the Yellow trail of the Wolf River System were pretty perfect, so it wasn’t a total wash. I’m giving my legs until Sunday to make an attempt at turning around.
On the winter training end of things, it looks like I’ll be making up my own training program to ready myself for the two marathons I’m planning on for the “off-season.” I’m somewhat relieved to switch to running for a while, because after 3 “close calls” with some really ignorant drivers in the past week, my road riding world is basically collapsing in around me from all sides. I thought that my driver fear would fade somewhat following getting hit nearly two years ago, but it seems to only get worse as I come to the stark realization that people who drive are mostly concerned with looking at their phones and not other human beings. I haven’t ridden my road bike since before I went to Colorado, but I still ride the handful of miles to/from the trail a few miles from my house. Hell, in those three situations I mentioned, the drivers saw me and still acted stupid, so it’s not a guarantee that just because someone knows you’re there doesn’t mean they won’t put your life in danger. The justice system favors drivers in all “accident” situations, no matter how distracted, inattentive, or foolish they are, so there’s basically no punishment for mowing someone down because you wanted to read that email or you just wanted to pass the person on a bike and force them into the gutter immediately before a redlight. I’m prettymuch terrified any time my wheels are on asphalt.
So, you could say that I’m ready for a mental break from the road.
In more positive news…
The Just Riding Along show on Mountain Bike Radio is awesome. I came up with a couple of really cool t-shirt ideas during my last road trip, and we’re in the process of getting S2N Design to help us make my rough MS Paint sketches become a not-so-rough reality.
Turbo, my aged Belgian Malinois, once again wins the “hardass dog” award. For the past couple of years, she’s had an on/off seasonal cough. She occasionally needs medication, but it’s generally not that serious. Last week, she started coughing again. I gave her some cough medicine, but she didn’t really respond, so I took her to the vet. An x-ray revealed that she’s got a pretty significant case of pneumonia in her right lung. The doctor was pretty surprised because, aside from the coughing, she was otherwise acting normal. She’s now on a double dose of antibiotics and the cough is slowly going away.
After this pic/conversation on Instagram, I felt compelled to do a series of “day in the life” photos to illustrate how easy it is to only post the fun stuff on the internet for everyone to see. I keep forgetting to start taking photos as soon as I wake up, though it was probably too dark for pictures during the 4:30am Indy-needs-to-potty wake up call. I may just start posting them from random parts of the day with some sort of witty hashtag. You can follow at Brickhouseracing on Instagram…
Oh, yeah… I almost forgot to mention (late post edit). I just pledged on Kickstarter to get a pair of Keirin Cut Jeans. I’ve always had a stupidly hard time finding jeans that fit my legs and my waist, and these are designed to eliminate the problem. If you have the same issue (and I know a lot of you do), then check them out and sign up for a pair. The more of you who do that, the quicker they’re put into production…
Did I mention that the weather is amazing? I will probably run errands on my scooter this afternoon.