Great weather, silly car mishaps, and lost gear

WOW, it seems spring may have finally shoved winter out of the way here in eastern North Carolina. There were two spectacular weekend days and a pretty good Friday. I enjoyed logging over 115 miles over those three days. One of the other great thing this weekend was the beginning of my 2009 cyclist tan. You know, the one that looks like a farmer tan only way cooler, right? It's also daylight savings time now, meaning an extra hour of training time!

Friday was a fairly normal ride other than almost getting t-boned by an idiot, which was not the name I thought of at the time, in a Mazda 626. She decided to cut in front of me on a left hand turn close enough for me to see what color her hair was as I felt the breeze from her car blow past. I looked behind me for a split second to see what the car situation was there and nearly ended up wearing a Japanese sedan to Friday night dinner with the family.

Why do people in cars do this stuff? On more than one occasion I have put my hand out on a car to keep from hitting it after locking up my breaks. I've been clipped by side view mirrors-twice. The first time was like being hit suddenly from behind and pushed forward. Luckily I managed to stay rolling and not splattered.

The second time I was not so lucky. I got clipped by a Tahoe's side view mirror with such force it put me in a ditch and threw my bike 10 feet away from me. I still don't know exactly what happened. One minute I was riding, the next I wasn't. I was only bruised and my bike wasn't hurt beyond changing some bar tape. The maddening thing was the guy got out of the car and didn't ask me if I was ok. Instead, he asked me if why I hit his truck. Those that know me best can predict my response to his question and it wasn't to wish him well on the rest of his ride home. The silver lining in that accident was the whole thing happened in front of a doctor who saw it all and checked me out before I rode home. Guess what? He was not just a doctor, but also a cyclist. Thank God for the little things in life. I knew that he wouldn't let me ride if I was too messed up, so I trusted him when he said I was ok to get home on my own if it wasn't too far.

This was a bad weekend for gear, which was the only bad thing. I lost not one, but two saddle bags with a spare tube, tire wrenches and a CO2 inflator. Grand total: nearly $100 when you add it all up. I think the lesson is to check the security of my saddle bag every once in awhile to make sure it's there. I guess a couple of good bumps knocked both of them off. So it's another trip to the bike shop to reload again. Sure as the world I'll blow a tube if I don't.

I need to give a shout out to my wife, the lovely and ever tolerant Deborah, for cutting me loose with time for my best ride of the year on Saturday. I did 73.06 miles at 18.5 mph, which is pretty darn good for this point of the season. The first 35 miles were biased nearly all uphill, the next 15-20 were sharp rolling hills and the rest was nearly all down hill. I'm not crazy! I felt awesome the last 10 miles and still had something left to drop the hammer.

Today was payback time. Deborah and I went for a recovery ride for me and her first ride of the season. I checked her bike out, made sure her iPod was juiced up, loaded some new music as a surprise and we were off. We rolled wherever she wanted to go for about an hour and a half until it was time to pick up one of our daughters. My legs felt better to spin some of the stiffness out and she loved the workout she got. It was nice on a day to ride as the temperature broke above 80 degrees again.

Tomorrow I head off to one of my sponsors, the Human Peformance Lab, for endurance testing. I can't wait to get a baseline of where I am now and to get some coaching on how to improve. One of my questions is going to be how to best lose the 15 lbs I don't want to take with me on rides. I'm not too chunky at 173 lbs and 5'9", but I'd like to be closer to 155 than I am now. I'd need to be 140 if I was racing in Europe. Last summer I got down to 158 for a bit and felt great. The goal for this year is to get below that quicker and stay there.

The European race season began in earnest today. It was really inspiring to watch the first stage of Paris-Nice. Contador absolutely slayed it with an average speed of over 30 mph on a 9.3 mile course in the rain and with temperatures in the forties.

This had to have driven a dagger into the heart of all his would be challengers because they know how devastating he is in the mountains and there are 4 mountain stages out of 8 in the race. Alberto had something to prove from last year and I think he made a statement today that might have already ended the race in the rain just outside Paris.