Pedal Strike

I hit the snooze button this morning. Almost twice.

That’s a pretty big deal for someone who can’t manage to sleep past 8am, even if I end up going to sleep at 3am. To sweeten the whole deal, I’ve even managed to sleep like the dead these past couple of days, not getting up restlessly in the middle of the night/early morning. This morning, I woke up and was positively giddy…and I had no idea why.

But as I hopped out of bed and inspected my gigantor thighs [and coming to the conclusion that they can use much more definition], I remembered exactly why. I passed out last night thinking of 100-milers, kits, and training sessions with friends…all on a fixed gear. And I was close to convincing myself that it could actually happen.

Blame Facebook on this one. When I put up “100 miles + fixed gear. Discuss” as a status message, I expected people to discourage me from even attempting it. Too bad friends were all too willing to help me meet this goal. And because I hate to disappoint, well…looks like I’m training for a century.

Assuming my knees don’t completely crap out, this means a lot of serious riding and probably a good measure of cross-training, too. This idea scares me; I’d actually consider facing the embarrassment of falling on my face in front of [insert name of hot messenger/cyclist/biker boy] as I try to clip out over the blood, sweat, and tears that’s going to be involved in this endeavor.

Yeah, I totally bit off more than I can chew on this one. I did consider backpedaling my way out of it, but couldn’t justify it without trying. And as I started contemplating how exactly to start chewing, I remembered an incident last year involving an insensitively inappropriate joke and my best friend. It had us both in fits of laughter in front of our respective computers [as always, it was over gchat]:

Me: I almost snorted out coffee all over my screen!

Lauren: I’m eating a cookie, and I’m laughing so hard I can’t taste it.

As embarrassing and terribly painful as this training thing might turn out to be, here’s hoping that even if I did manage to bite off more than I can chew, maybe I’ll be laughing so hard that it won’t even matter.

Tags:   century ride · chewing · embarrassing · fixed gear · training5 Comments