I was all set to ride with my buddie, Dave, but he wimped out on me at the last minute. I wasn’t detered though. I did delay about an hour in hopes that the sun would come out and warm things up. The sun did put in a brief appearance right as I took off. I was so sure that the sun would stay out that I took off my long sleeve winter shirt in favor of a short sleeve 3-pocket cycling jersey. Of course, I had my silk base layer on and my Performance wind jacket, so either way, I was gonna be fine. My concern was that I not over heat. I shouldn’t have been concerned. I bet I hadn’t gotten a half mile before the sun hid behind some threatening clouds — never to be seen again!

Here’s a shot I took of myself at the stop sign by the Berthoud Fire Station on Colorado 56. This is about 12 minutes out from the house. I use this spot, and the time it took me to get here as a guage of how well I’m doing on a particular day. Yesterday, I struggled to get here in about 13 minutes. Hadn’t found a rythym  at all. Today, I wasn’t pushing or feeling like I was struggling and just cruised in at the 12:30 mark.  It just amazes me how different I can feel from day to day. I fully expected to be drained after yesterday’s long ride but quite to the contrary, I had good energy and my legs didn’t feel heavy or sluggish. Go figure!

I brought the camera along today to help remind me that this is a recovery ride. To keep myself from dialing in on performance I look for images that might enhance this blog. I figure I should have a couple of me in here as well as scenery and novelty shots. I tried to take several of myself and had varying degrees of success. I’m using a Canon SX200-IS because it has a 12x optical zoom. The downside is that the lens doesn’t have a very good wide-angle setting and my arms aren’t quite long enough to compose a good “close-up” shot. For your laughing pleasure, here are the shots I took today…

I didn’t see nearly as many other riders either. I’d say I saw 7-10.  One of the last riders I encountered was in a low 3-wheeled capsule! He/she went by me so fast I hardly had time to get my camera out and snap a shot  (used every bit of that 12x too!) before it disappeared from sight.  I was tempted to chase it down for another photo — but I’m not sure I could’ve caught up with it.  Here’s what it looked like as it rode away…