The Dawn of a new Cycle!

So now I'm solidly into my second cycle!

After my 8k race I took a full three days off. No workouts, no nothing. It felt great and by the 4th day I was brimming with energy and ready to go.

To make things even better, I finally got the balls to ride outside. Yup, after 1158 INDOOR miles I manned up, got myself a bike helmet and headed out to the wild outdoors. My first ride was extremely shaky. I felt like I was always a second from veering violently out of control and thrown to the ground. For an hour I hung on to the bull horns for dear life. It definitely was not a pleasant experience.

However, that ride just made me even more determined to get comfortable on the bike. The very next morning I got up at 5:30am to make sure I could ride without the distraction of traffic and joggers.... and my god was it different. Somehow, overnight, I become much more competent on the bike. I wrote something about this phenomenon in an earlier post. Now I'm definitely a firm believer of 'sleeping on it'.

As of that second outdoors ride, bike training has overtaken swimming as my favorite discipline... not my strongest (by far), but definitely the most enjoyable. Riding alone at the brink of dawn is one of the greatest feelings ever. Catching the sunrise over the horizon, feeling the wind in your hair, seeing the ground past by you in a blur, feeling the surge of endorphins in your veins as you take a descent at 25 mph... these are sensations that mere words cannot do justice.

Sometimes I lie awake at night, my heart beating hard in anticipation of the next morning's ride.