I might actually fucking log in

I just finished reading one of my fave blogs: www.arcticglass.blogspot.com

I love reading her blog, am usually inspired to write and then I relax, take a few deep breaths.
And then I don't write.

So today, I will write. At least a little.

My favorite ride so far this year was sometime in early June. It had rained, it was still fairly cloudy and massive thunderheads were threatening to the south. Not heeding any sane advice our coaches had givenin the past, we decided to head out.

The ground was nice and soggy, the trail was still pretty wet. There were tons of puddles on the bike trail and in the road. There were tons of blossoms, seed pods and general treee-type detritous in the path. We were riding our mountain bikes (set up specifically to nearly mimic road bikes, but anyway...)

The park was deserted, no doubt because of the threat of rain and possibly thunder and lightning. No one on foot, no die-hard long distance runners, no recreational bikers with the "baby carriers" attached. Not much of anything or anyone. It was bliss.

We went a few hundred yards and it started to rain. Just a nice, soft, friendly rain. No thunder. No lightning. The mean black clouds also started to roll away....to be replaced by happy, grey rain clouds. You know the kind of rain that rains all day and soaks your yard and vegetable garden with rainy goodness? Yep, it was that kind of rain.

We were like little kids playing in puddles. We were pretty much soaked in about 15 minutes. Within 5 minutes we were covered with mud, road muck and tons of "tree stuff" Our bikes were coated too. No one was around, so were rarely even changed cadence and rarely had to use our brakes. When we did actually brake, we gave good thought to it because most of our braking involved slowly pushing the brake levers so as to "scrub" water from our rims so we could force a stop.

We were out about an hour, I have no idea how many miles we went. We were soaked. We were filthy. We were elated. The point on a day like that seems more about the experience, the fun, the dirt, the water than any average speed record or interval training. It's more like that for me anyway...the Zen of biking, not the quantity.