Glorious Fall Week

I’ve been rehabbing a pulled ligament somewhere on the inside of my left ankle/top of my foot since, say May, though it feels like I’ve been working on it since about 1999. It kind of feels like it’s been getting better, but still not good.

A bunch of decent/good runs last week – I was in Albuquerque, and had a great run along the Rio Grande, a terrible run on the bike path behind the hotel, and then a transcendent run on Friday on my way home from Bradley International on the Salmon River Rail Trail – perfect weather, a solid sign of fall leaves in the trees. Everything I love about New England wrapped into one amazing half hour on a Friday Afternoon.

The oldest kid is running high school XC this year, and he’s completely gotten faster than I am. Which is fine, and actually a great sign that he’s developing into the kid Missy and I hope he will, but it’s still kind of a kick in the teeth…

Saturday, we head out to a Cub Scout hike at Devil’s Hopyard State Park. Hike was awesome. Kid’s got 5-6 easy on the training plan from his XC coach, so I say “Hey, why don’t we go for a lap of the park after the hike?” Absolutely, he says.

Hindsight says that may have been a mistake.

(“Dad, you’ve got talking hindsight?”)

Profile was brutal – two miles up, and a mile straight down. Kid was nice and didn’t laugh out loud at me. I decided we’d still feed and house him for the night.

The downside is that I may have tweaked my right knee. Ran again yesterday; 3 miles easy at Bluff Point, and something’s just not right. It’s not bad, but not quite right.

Oh, well. I’m down 5 pounds from earlier this summer, and I’m actually itching to run and ride for the first time in a while.

#nostrava Saturday

So, an idiot with aerobars hit and killed a pedestrian in Central Park this week. And, BikeSnobNYC wrote a decent proposal to de-Strava-fy for the weekend out of solidarity for the dead woman’s family.

So, I did.

Missy and I did our semi-regular loop this Saturday morning. It’s glorious here – started the day at about 50 degrees, up to mid 60s by the time we made it downtown for lattes. The loop’s almost perfect – a quick kicker of a climb about 5K into it, rollers for the next 15K, coffee at about 25K, and we’re home and dusted less than two hours after we leave and about 25 miles later. Half the ride has water views, most of it has very little traffic and great shoulders – you should come ride with us.

The above is from last weekend. Missy uses a garmin and doesn’t upload to Strava, and she says we went faster this week than last week. But, honestly, that’s not why we were out there. It was a gorgeous day, we sweated a bunch, spent some quality time together, and helped accelerate the eventual heat death of the universe. Not much more a guy can ask for.

I’ve got to point out here that I can’t blame Strava for one idiot on a bike, and I plan to go back to logging bike rides on Strava as soon as I ride again after today. Strava is kind of a net positive to my mind, a place where one can track progress and evaluate fitness trends. I’ve used it to find good rides and runs as I’ve traveled, and it’s probably kept me safer overall than if it didn’t exist.

The bigger takeaway I’ve got, though, is that we, as individuals, put a pretty low price on other people’s lives sometimes. I’m participating in #nostrava weekend because I think we need to change that. As a driver, I’d also like to see something similar started when a motorist kills a cyclist or pedestrian, but that really takes the form of being a more conscientious driver every day, as the country averages about 100 fatalities from automobiles EVERY SINGLE DAY EVERY DAY OF THE YEAR. And a lot of those are from folks who didn’t think they were trying to set a personal speed record.

Be good to each other out there, no matter what your mode of transport.