Well, yesterday was one hell of a smack down. I’m not quite sure why I showed up, except that I seem to be the one in charge of announcing and leading the ride. It’s been a rough month. About 3 weeks ago I got some sort of horrible virus or potentially strep (though the test came back negative). My doctor put me on amoxicillin. About 5 days later I was covered in red spots from head to toe. And after missing the smack down that week I decided to try the next one, even though I hadn’t really been off the couch/out of bed in about a week. I got to the meetup and rode with the group until Greenville Ave and didn’t even try to keep up when the pace picked up. Took a scenic route home.

Next week, I skipped altogether and went for an easy bike path ride. Still on a one-ride-per-week schedule, I stopped with the cross bike on the way home from CT Monday to do some hill repeats on Case Mountain. And by repeats I mean one. total distance for the ride was probably 4 miles. Nice steep hill, on dirt, but still. That one climb, likely because of the difference of climbing on dirt, etc, and using new muscles, had my legs killing me all day yesterday. But I went out for the Smack Down, without high hopes. The legs actually improved a bit with riding.

I lasted a bit longer. I got popped off just after Greenville Ave, but reconnected in time for Austin, but never had a chance to hold on going up Austin. A new (and quite strong) rider Melissa was also otb at that point, so we took a short cut so that we could ride with the group a bit at the end. Pretty much took it easy for that part of the ride, but some of the short steep hills hurt like hell. I just didn’t have any power. The group caught us again on Winsor, and we were able to hold on pretty well until back to the bike path.

Came home, had dinner. Puked dinner. Still feel like crap this morning. Something’s clearly not quite right and I’m pretty sure I’m still recovering from whatever that virus was, because there’s no reason for that ride to have been that tough. Sure the pace was hard, but I actually took it pretty easy for a majority of the ride. Maybe next week?