Burning!

Last night I dreamt about a professional, although fictional, bicycle race. In my dream, this race was two weeks long, though it wasn't clear in which European country it was taking place. What was clear, however, was the daily play-by-play of all the cyclists and their strategies. The first week of my dream race was all mountain stages, and the second week was mostly flat with a few time trials (inexplicably, Fabian wasn't there). It was all very exciting -- like having my own little sports channel playing in my brain. Lance Armstrong was competing, and he adopted an unusual strategy of riding as hard as possible, burning up the course on every single stage until he had nothing left. This would probably be a poor tactic in a real race, though it would no doubt make for exciting spectating. In my dream, after one of the mountain stages, I interviewed Lance Armstrong, who only wanted to talk about one thing -- Lance Armstrong (likely an accurate representation). In any event, I'm not sure what all of this means, and I don't know why I'm mentioning it here, except for the fact that it affirms one thing: I have officially become one of the cycling-obsessed.

Zdenek and I have been burning up the roads ourselves lately, and if I owned more cycling attire, we might actually be out there every single day. It's been burning hot in New York, too, so the breeze experienced during riding is far preferable to the hot soup sensation during running. I'm enjoying drafting off Zdenek as much as possible, since this provides both of us with a challenging workout. But try as I might, I've been known to get dropped from time to time, especially on the hills. I don't like having to holler at him to slow down, since that makes me look like a bit of a lightweight in front of the Central Park riding elite. But Zdenek and I have now come up with a secret code word that I can yell out from behind whenever I notice that the gap between his rear wheel and my front one is increasing at an alarming rate: burning. (And nobody needs to know that this refers to the fact that my legs are on fire and I cannot possibly push any harder to catch up.)

Yesterday it was another scorcher in New York, but Zdenek and I rushed home in time for a five mile run in the Park. We tried to stick to the soft surface and cooler shade of the bridle path, but it was still an extremely difficult, uncomfortable 40 minutes. With about one mile to go, on the last big hill of our route, I looked over my shoulder at my hot and sweaty husband. It was obvious that he was enjoying this run very little and would not be happy to pick it up a notch. But then I just decided to go for it. I shifted to a higher gear. It was very Lance-esque of me. And from behind me came a sound: "Burning!"