I have ridden 10 days. I am ready to get off this fucking horse. One of the great consistencies in my travels I have to admit is that as the end nears, I am almost always ready to go home. Causal effect?
Two more rides, as long as the weather holds, and the weather has been great. Tomorrow, Tuesday, I will freelance. Wednesday I take my last ride with the Elite Bike Shop morning “slower” group, turn the bike in, final pack and I am off to the airport. Just looked it up, it is later than I thought, out at 2:30, in at 7PM, home about 10PM. I have to remember to check in, 2:30 PM tomorrow Tuesday. I plan to be down in Puerto Morelos for the day. I don.t do a lot of things like flight checkin on my phone so I will probably take the chance and just do it at like 6pm upon return to the apartment. The down side is that I could be assigned a middle seat but I think I can take it for a 4 hour flight.
Riding, even at 5am, I really do not mind. I can usually zone out on rides. Be thinking about something and miles will go by. Riding alone I seldom push myself. Back in NH I might take a faster riding passing me as a challenge and an excuse to gain a little fitness. I’ll race after them, catch 80%? and then just hang onto them for a mile or two and then drop back to my leasurly pace. Here it is different. And the difference is all about survival. It is much safer to ride the first 15K? with a group. When I am freelancing I often get dropped after 5 but 5 is safer than 0. The group is really enough protection from errant motorist but a group almost always these days comes with a chase car for added protection. What all the above means is that I have to ride like a bat out of hell for the first whatever K that I am holding onto a group. It is the mind that finally cracks and introduces the idea that this all out crazy effort is not worth the safety trade off. By then I will be all in, wild pant breathing mode. I’ll be repeating a montra like “just hold on” over and over.
And then there is the second anticipated discomfort, the dreaded dark. The street lights have been out every day, including today, from about 21K to 25K? Today I had the Elite group and the chase car headlights to guide me. Saturday I was on an Elite all day ride and Sunday I took a rest day. So Friday was my last “bad experience” in the dark. Hopefully I have gotteen better at it and will not suffer too much tomorrow Tuesday but I do not look forward to it.