Rusty

Planned a 7 mile bike ride for yesterday, but there were 30 mph winds. There are two schools of thought on this.

1) I need to train in every weather so I am prepared to race in every weather.
2) I haven't been on Donna in almost a year, how about I cut myself some slack the first time out.

I postponed to ride in today's milder forecasted winds.

Got Donna out of storage off the trainer.

Her tires were comically flat. I dealt with that, pinching my finger in the process.

Her chain looked sad, so I lubed her - and my hands - up.

Her computer battery was dead. I (miraculously!) found a spare, and promptly realized I couldn't remember how to reset from scratch. I randomly pushed buttons until stuff I recognized came on the screen (I still need to find manual and figure out how to set my tire size so it tracks properly.)

I walked her out to the street, took a deep breath, hoped I would manage to clip in before I fell over, started to mount and... realized I was still in my sandals.

About a mile into the ride I caught a brief respite from the unrelenting, always-a-headwind-no matter-which-direction, 11-mph-my-ass-wind and decided to try out my legs in the big ring.

At which point I thought I'd either broken something or forgotten how to shift. But a quick peek told me that I was already in the big ring.

1st thought) I am such a moron.
2nd thought) Go me and all those carrying Bear up the stairs leg muscles!

Bright side... my raging case of Post Pregnancy Shoes Don't Fit turned out to be a good thing for my stupidly expensive special order wide width bike shoes that took me two years to find. Before now they were a size too big because that was as small as they came in wide. Now they fit perfectly, and I feel like my pedaling is much more efficient now that my feet aren't slipping around in the shoes.

I still don't know if my shoulder - and current lack of definitive swimming pool option - will allow me to race in 7 weeks. I may have to go with volunteering in June and racing in August. I'm taking it one workout at a time.