Yesterday I decided to do a do-over.  I figured it was Monday again, time to do another long ride, preferably without bonking.  I got distracted by things in my house (like the telephone, and the email, and the breakfast dishes, and, and–the list goes on).  But I managed to get myself out the door around 10.  Because I was later starting than I had planned to be, I decided to cut it from 50 to 45 miles.  Don’t ask why.  I figured it would take me about 3 hours, which seemed a more sensible amount of time than 3 hours and 20 minutes.  I don’t know.  Somehow, in my head, it all had to do with lunch, which really should be irrelevant.  I must work on my tendency to cop out when the thought of missing a meal crops up.

Anyway, I did have a great ride.  The humidity has started to drop here in central North Carolina, and we’re just beginning to move into the glorious weather of early fall.  Yesterday the air seemed cleaner and clearer, the temperature was perfect–all in all, it was a really beautiful day, and I was happy to be out in it. 

My husband often asks me what I think about when I ride by myself for hours at a time.  (I think he secretly wants me to say “nothing” because that would confirm that only an empty-headed dolt would do all this crazy riding, but I try to make it sound like I’m having deep philosophical insights into the meaning of life).  But here’s a summary of the various topics I contemplated yesterday, some profound, some random, and some downright strange.

–Food.  I spend a LOT of time thinking about food, whether I’m on my bike or not.  Yesterday I repeatedly calculated calories, even though I had done this before I left the house.  I sort of have to calculate before I leave, otherwise, as evidenced by my experience last week, I’ll bonk.  Keeping myself fueled is a constant battle; I grew up with the same body image issues as most women my age, and I really have to detach myself from those emotional issues and think of food as a purely clinical fuel issue.  So yesterday I drank two servings of Accelerade (120 calories each), and I ate 1 homemade energy bar (containing peanut butter, slivered dried apricots, pine nuts, and chocolate chips, among other things.  I’m still tweaking the recipe.  But I think it contained about 200 calories), 1 Gu (90 calories), 2 snack slices of Kraft 2% sharp cheddar (90 cal. each), and 17 Crispy Wheats crackers (130 calories; I buy them at Whole Foods, but they’re just like Stoned Wheat Thins).  I also drank a bottle and a half of water.  That added up to 240 calories per hour.  I aim for 250/hour, so that was about as close as I ever get.  And I felt great all the way through.  I followed up with a 16 oz. bottle of Nesquick fat-free chocolate milk, my recovery drink of choice, for 320 calories.   Then I ate normally for the rest of the day, and tried to get some extra water.  We’ll know how it all worked in  half an hour or so, when I go run with my son’s cross-country team.  The next workout is always the proof of the pudding . . .

–I passed a giant field in which the dirt had just been plowed up for the foundation of some large building to be poured.  The dirt smelled nasty.  Several years ago I took a soil class from local gardening guru, Tony Avent, and learned that when you turn up several feet of dirt like that, you release anaerobic organisms from their homes deep in the soil, and that’s why it smells so bad (I know there’s a leap of faith in that statement; my memory of the class is sketchy.  But I know the smell has to do with the anaerobic organisms; that phrase stuck).  Tony Avent is great, as is his nursery at plantdelights.com.

–I am painting my house, and contemplating colors, and I wondered for a long time about the difference in visual impact between a light pattern on a dark background, and a dark pattern on a light background.  I need to look that up.

–I thought for a long time about the series of letters to the editor that our local newspaper has printed in the last couple of weeks, in response to a column regarding the nuisance that cyclists on the road present to drivers behind them.  This column apparently suggested that cyclists be compelled to pay a steep licensing fee in exchange for our right to ride on the road.  I’ve read these letters to the editor, but I admit I didn’t see the original piece.  Nonetheless, I chewed on this for a good hour yesterday, and managed to get myself quite worked up.  I decided that I would actually be more than happy to pay an extra fee to ride my bike on the road, but that said payment would remove any obligation I might have previously felt to be an accomodating, considerate consumer of pavement.  If I pay this fee, I’m done sharing the lane.  No more staying way over to the right, hugging the white line, trying meekly to stay out of the way of the cars.  No sir.  I’m taking the lane.  The whole thing.  If I’m paying extra, the cars can just wait.

Actually, I’m very conflict-avoidant, and I do drive a car myself (a minivan, actually, so not even a particularly tiny car), so I don’t think I’d ever go out and publicly argue such a position.  I certainly wouldn’t do so without doing some more research.  Perhaps I should at least read the original article.

So, yes, plenty goes on in my head when I’m riding–some of which is constructive, some not so much.

Off to cross-country now.