Continuing on a tear to repent for holiday indulgences, and with a concerned eye towards the upcoming racing season, we have been riding every day this week. The legs are cooked. There’s more scheduled for tomorrow.
During stretches like this, especially during the winter, the prospect of getting on the bike can seem pretty bleak from the vantage point of the sofa. But then I get out- duty? Guilt? Fear? Compulsion?- and I remember: It’s beautiful out there.
Besides, here in NYC, as in many places, we’ve been getting a pass on real winter this time around. Twenty degrees further south and I’ll be whistling (whimpering?) a different tune (in the basement, on the rollers).
Babysitters are hard to come by at 7am on New Year’s Day, so I couldn’t make the CRCA’s annual Bear Mt. Century this morning. But the wife came home from the factory, eventually, and I got to head out with a few other hungover types.
It’s funny, this time of year, to be out in a team kit that will soon be replaced, to be worn again only as nostalgia; to see other teams whose sponsors, and kits, will soon change; and seeing riders in kits you know will soon be jettisoned for that of a new squad.
Securing a place on a team can be like getting a date to the prom: rounds of gossip and speculation and shifting alliances, and needling feelings you thought you’d left behind in high school. Personally, I’ve always been suspicious of that hot chick who winks at me in the cafeteria. I’m stickin with my date from last year. She promised she’d shave more often, and get those teeth fixed.
Anyway, prom season is over now. Team rosters are pretty much set. New kits are designed and ordered- or they’d better be if you want them to show up before that first frosty morning of racing in February or March (depending on your preferred poison). It’s 2012 officially now. That morning is not so far off.
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