Cyclists behaving badly

Saturday, April 3, 2010

“Hey…you’re giving cyclist a bad name,” I called from my car window to the rider blocking the road in front of me.

He’d been riding side by side with another cyclist through the park and effectively blocking cars and forcing them to drive over the center line to get around them. They’d been cruising about 10 mph on a road zoned for 30. And they were pissing me off.

I’ve been cycling the roads for over forty years and 100,000 miles. I know what I’m doing and feel qualified to school others. I’ve had every kind of experience – good and bad – you can have with vehicles. Mostly the fault of the vehicles, but I’ve been a butt head in a couple of cases. Anyway…these two were in the wrong. We were stopped at a light and I pulled along the cyclist.

“You’re giving us a bad name riding that way. Drivers get pissed when you won’t let them pass,” I said.

“Yeah? We’re in the park…they can wait,” he said, his voice rising in anger.

“Look…I’m a cyclist, too. You’re wrong to ride that way.”

“To hell with you…I’ll do what I want,” he said as he rode away.

To hell with me? He’s pissing off drivers. Drivers with a couple of tons of metal around them and too much horsepower. Except they won’t hit him. Nope. They’ll brush me off the road because they start to think all cyclist are arrogant assholes when only a few…like this knucklehead…actually are. And don’t tell my about the rights of cyclists to the roads. I know what they are and I know the difference between asserting those rights and getting run off the road by angry motorists. Sometimes…you just have to be smart.

I’d have probably been more angry if I hadn’t just had my longest run of the comeback. Yesterday was supposed to have been an one hour run, but I had felt so lousy in the heat, that I’d quit early. I came back today to remedy that.

It went well for the first 25 minutes, but then I began to feel the cumulative effects of yesterday’s run. I plodded on anyway. At the 50-minute mark, I elected to sit on a log overlooking a steep ravine. Overhead, I spotted an eagle and though I only caught glimpses of it, was very happy I’d stopped. After five minutes, I felt refreshed enough to complete the run. It went slowly, but when I returned to the car, 71 minutes had elapsed since my first step. And still no pain in the calf!

I returned home and decided I needed to check the weight. Tomorrow was Easter and I’d be eating chicken and flat dumplings…in other words…3,000 calories of pure…saturated to the gills…deliciously high in cholesterol…fat. I was thinking what I’d be doing is putting some time in on the bike later to precompensate.

And then that lovely, little scale blinked my new weight… “192”.

Holy mackinoly. I was down 14 pounds from my initial weight in mid-February and four over the last ten days – while I'd been able to increase my running. Let me tell you…I…was…happy!!!

I still thought I’d play it safe for tomorrow, but it looked like a possible thunderstorm and so I elected instead to head for the Metropark and a hike with Dakota. We only made it about 25 minutes before the rains and high winds chased us to the car. Maybe tomorrow I’d try three days in a row of running…

Run duration: 71 minutes. Hike duration: 25 minutes.

Training Heart Rate: 140 running. 80 hiking.

Calories burned during workout: 1200 running. 200 hiking.