A compliment

This morning got off to a less than ideal start. I’m not sure if it was the fact that I had managed to get little more than six hours sleep, or whether the oppressive heat and humidity has been weighing me down. But while preparing for the morning’s ride, I happened to read a few emails that had arrived in my Inbox overnight. Without going into the details, suffice it to say that the messages really set me off in the worst way. Zdenek suggested that maybe I should skip cycling and get another hour of sleep (especially since I haven’t taken a break from running or riding in many days, and it’s still 30+ degrees here all day, every day), but I know that the only thing to keep me sane is the hour or two I have every day during which my heart is pumping fast and my legs are turning over as quickly as I can make them. So I wiped my tears and tired eyes, changed into my jersey, and headed out the door.

After a relatively hard first lap (during which I drafted for a few of the miles), Zdenek decided to go it alone on the second loop and ride as fast as he could. Meanwhile, I would ride solo, cut off the top mile of the Park, and meet him back at the start (as we’ve done successfully a few times in the past). Just before the East 72nd Street transverse, he waved goodbye and was off. But I, despite the poor start to my morning, was feeling pretty warmed up by this time, and so didn’t deliberately slow my pace simply because I was now sans husband. In fact, I picked it up. And before I knew it, I was back at the start in a truly record time, all by myself. I realized, looking at my split, that it might take Zdenek a bit longer than usual to catch up with me on the third loop, but I assumed that he was big and strong enough to lap me eventually. On my third loop, though, I was over halfway through before it became obvious that he was probably never going to catch me at all. No bother, I thought, I’ll just wait for him at the finish before riding home.

My solo cycling power would have probably been sufficient to turn my morning from bad to great, but the icing on the cake came during my climb up Harlem Hill. For the last few miles, I had been riding close to two other men on tri bikes -- sometimes I was ahead of them, sometimes they would get ahead of me, but mostly we were within 20 feet of one another at all times. Just as I began to huff and puff a little harder while spinning up the hill, one of the guys said to me, “Do you race?” No, I told him, I just ride for fun. “Well,” he replied, “you should race.” I told him that I was happy with marathons, to which he responded, “Your running ability has really translated into cycling. You should seriously consider racing, or at least triathlons.” It was as if he had been reading my mind! And then he rode with me a bit more -- we talked about his hamstring injury and where in the world my husband could be -- before I had to say goodbye and wait for Zdenek at the West 77th Street transverse. (Unfortunately, Zdenek turned up five minutes later than expected. Apparently he was so surprised to have not lapped me that he assumed he must have zoomed right past me at some point, so he stopped midway through the third loop and waited for several minutes midway, thinking I might “catch up.”)

Although everything in my day since that ride has been less than stellar, I keep coming back to that unexpected compliment. It’s wonderful to think that I actually pass for a cyclist to someone who isn't my husband or best friend, and that confirmation was worth any hour of lost sleep.