Today, I completed my first strict recovery ride. Strict in that my eyes are on my heart rate at pretty much all “hard” segments of my ride. The aim is to keep my heart rate below 153 at all times, so no real effort really – almost pure slow spinning.
I have to say, I actually feel great right now, just 2 hours after the ride. But, I can see myself getting bored with these rides fairly quickly due to the fact that I’m not focusing on riding so much (because it’s slow), so I am forced to look around…at The Villages. All the trees, grass, flowers and people so pristine in their unnatural habitat. Palm trees aren’t supposed to be here, but there they are. And this neighborhood looks exactly like the ones before it. So boring.
The one hilarious thing that happened on the ride occurred outside a church as one of the services had to have ended with all the cars exiting onto the road I was riding. All the drivers noticed me on the road as I made eye contact with two that strolled on out. I needed to turn left and saw an opening between the 2nd and 3rd drivers. As I made eye contact with the 3rd driver, I flung out my left arm, signaling I was changing lanes to get to the left turn lane. I had plenty of room and made the switch just before the traffic signal in front of me turned red.
As he comes to a stop next to me, he yells something incomprehensible in my direction. I was feeling cheeky and yelled clearly back to him, “Looks like church failed you!” The man just stared at me for a second, probably realizing the truth to my statement as well as all of the other open windows of vehicles next to us. I added, “Yes, I’m talking to you,” pointing at the dumb-founded man. He quickly averted his gaze and sat in silence until the light turned green then sped off.
This isn’t a blog about religion or anything, but I’ve found a lot of these retired people to be just like this man. Christian on Sunday for 1-2 hours, then a bastard the rest. Makes for crappy society and even crappier cycling. It’s jerks like this who are road-ragers and get people killed, including helpless cyclists.
My last words on this episode – if you’re Christian, BE Christian. If you’re Jewish, BE Jewish. If you’re Buddhist, BE Buddhist. Don’t make it just a label, make it you.
On and off the bike.
In any case, the ride went well other than this SNAFU. I’ll be looking forward to my interval training for sure.
round cycler 
nice job – keep it up! but I want to see proof! 😉
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