Sweaty Little Droplets of Thoughts About Riding

• The right turn only lane is, evidently, the lane one takes to get ahead of the people in the "straight only" lane. Were a motorist to run me down pulling off this sketchy move, she'd go to jail for breaking the law, and maybe to hell for killing somebody. Unless she's a congregant at the Trinity United Church speeding in order to cut me off with a right hook, so she can go talk to Jesus sooner, in which case it's apparently no big deal, the outraged cyclist's stream of profanities and fist-shaking notwithstanding. I've had a few days when I needed to speak with Jesus about something I did. Oddly enough, I didn't nearly kill anybody on my way to go pray. Evidently, this makes me an unusual sort of person.
  
• Recovering from an injury is a confidence game. You need confidence to stay in the game. Training with power can do that sometimes. Usually the meter is harsh and truthful. Sometimes, despite your worries, it is kind and truthful, and tells you that your 1 minute intervals were the most powerful ones you've ever ridden, 102% of your prior best output for a minute. Okay, so maybe 1 minute critical power isn't my problem, maybe we need to look at the 5:00 and 10:00 and 20.
  
• It was, no shit, really hot today, and maybe the second or third most uncomfortable day of the year to ride up the treeless first leg of the Metropolitan Branch Trail. In that weather - heat index > 100 degrees, one rides along with no intention of trying to catch the rider 20 yards ahead. Forget not wanting to do the Pathlete Criterium; I didn't even want to have to talk to the dude.
  
• Nothing is finer than sun-boiled Accellerade. It's like sun-brewed ice tea, except without out the good taste, thirst-quenching qualities, or crave-ability.
• Tonight I had sweat rolling off my forehead, down to the tip of my nose, and from there onto the top tube. This kept me chuckling for over an hour in high amusement. It is possible that my elevator sometimes does not go all the way up to the top floor.
  
• The appropriate cycling pace for severely hot weather is Southern Old People Walking Pace. Ever seen that? It's slower than swamp water. If your riding on a wicked hot day is metaphorically faster than a 67 year-old Southern judge after a meat & three, capped with three martinis, then you need to slow down. Never mind the possibility of messing up your lungs and heat injury; it takes too much out of you mentally to piss away a hard effort on a ride that will give you negligible physical training benefit.
• I don't know what cross season will hold, nor do you. One of the best things about racing is that right up until the butterflies in your stomach become unbearable, having butterflies for weeks before a race is a cool kind of anticipation that keeps you on your toes and stuck into your training schedule.
• Peanut butter rocks. I like the organic stuff really well but Peter Pan Crunchy has a delightful almost fast food texture to it, so it's hereby deemed The Best. I will brook no dissent on this point.
• The Vuelta should be called the Tour de Meh. The name would be more accurate. The windy flat stages are even more boring than comparable stages in the TdF since many of the sprinters are staying home and getting tuned up for Worlds, while the hill stages are rigged to favor tiny Basque climbers, who are basically racing for a stage win so that somebody else will pay for their drinks for the rest of their lives. Come to think of it, Tour de Meh may be an overly exuberant title.
• I found out that one of my regular riding buddies hates all the Spanish riders except for Freire and maybe Sammy Sanchez, and he hates the Vuelta. So do I! The only thing better than finding out unexpectedly that a friend loves all the stuff you love, is finding out they hate all the stuff you hate, probably even moreso, to find a person of such striking genius and wit. It makes you feel like a big puffed up parrot looking in a mirror and going, "Who's the pretty bird?"