Posted by Daniel Sun, 10 Sep 2006 23:52:02 GMT

The weather was spectacular, my wife joined a mommy and me music class with Noah, so it was time to ride!

Two weeks ago I tweaked my left knee doing out-of-saddle intervals, something I really have to work on more often. I was working on it, but clearly got out of control somewhere. Ooops. This past Thursday (a week past the injury) I joined some folks for a fairly flat 25 mile ride and my knee was still bothering me despite being off the bike quite a bit due to inclement weather. Though I rarely ride on a Friday, I decided that I should try spinning it out a bit the next morning and snuck in a brief cruise around the lake. I did the outer, slightly hilly, loop just once and decided that pushing it any more was a bad idea. A few more gentle loops and I called it a day.

It was with some trepidation that I joined this ride this morning, since they were headed down toward the city although not actually crossing over the George Washington Bridge… but actually going past it a bit on the Jersey side. I know that there are some real hills on route 9W, and I wondered if my knee (and everything else) would hold up.

A nice crowd of 12 turned out for the ride. And I warned the ride leader that I might be bailing depending on how I felt. I survived the first climb, got dropped on the second (oy, they waited for me) and had a blast rolling on the flats and downhill sections (knowing full well that we’d be going back up those same hills). A reasonably brief stop at Whole Foods and the climb back began.

The first hill leading up from the Hudson sucked, but because I was fresh from the rest wasn’t as terrible as it might have been. Strangely, I got cut off midway up the hill by a guy trailing his boat up from the Hudson… couldn’t he have cut me some slack? Could he not see how hard I was working? Anyway, I caught up with the group briefly before being dropped on the next climb, knowing that I should be able to catch up on the other side. And sure enough I did, although I’m not certain that the person who I caught wasn’t waiting for me, they might have, or they might have been caught by the light. I’m not sure. But I had them in my sights…

One more very brief stop in Tenafly, one last climb, and the rest of the trip was essentially flat.

I made the whole ride but got dropped hard. So it goes. My knee held up (I did use some Advil to help) without feeling worse, but spinning up hills without getting out of the saddle is very hard on my cardio system for hills like that… I was afraid of tweaking my knee again, and it was really doing well, but I really have to get stronger and lose more weight. Sheesh. Nothing wrong with getting dropped, although the waiting-for-me, was more than I wished for, I was enjoying the chase, and had a clear advantage in love of downhills and gravity. Ahh well. It *was* kind of them.

I don’t have the exact stats but it was 36.38 miles. [It occurs to me that I never mentioned the headwind… is there anything more annoying than a headwind on slight incline when you’re trying to chase back on? I don’t think so.]

It did use up a nice portion of the day, but I realized that between the holidays and weather there won’t be too many more Sundays like this, and despite the risks (knee), had a great time. Allez!