First Sunday Ride of the year..

Everyone else is posting blogs about how he or she is so happy she started a month ago, or so glad they didn't get out of shape in the off season.. and I'm not here to do that. In off seasons-past, I ran daily and rode once a week. This year I did diddly squat. The migraines forced me to take two weeks off from all activity, followed by a week back to running (albeit poorly), followed by two weeks off from all activity.. rinse, repeat. For over two months. I'm not 100% better, but I've figured out the migraines. They're being managed. And I'm back to training.

Friday's Sierra repeats with the Rolleses were lonely. I could see I & S on some of the straights, but I was frustrated with my crappy legs and I set a new bike HR max of 190, while going about 3 mph. The difference between starting up after a couple months of easy training and a couple months of nothing is huge. It was the first 3h ride of the season, and I sucked - but I deserved it. 

Today was the first Sunday Boca ride of my season. I bribed my bike into going into the big ring (it didn't want to the past two rides) and rode into town to meet the group. It was small. And fortunately for me, some famous Tour guy named Daniel Thomason or Tom Danielson had kicked everyone's butt yesterday. Making it a small, mellow group. We rode over the Pali and into the rain. I was able to get up Old Pali in the same general vicinity as Ray.. 

The view everyone gets of Ray as we head up the Old Pali Rd tree tunnel.. though the blurry is usually just in my brain.

And then we descended the windward side of the Pali into the pouring rain and whipping wind, which stung like mad. Here's the hairpin, which I was smart enough not to attempt to photograph while riding 40 mph with foggy glasses.

The boys starting the race around Lanikai (which was mellow today.. phew!):

52 miles later, I was home. Just as I was starting to feel the tired in my quads and considering eating something made of gu/gel/sugary crap. It was a water-fueled ride today because I am not ready to ingest all that ick yet. Every minute of it was fun (well, the Pali descent was mostly freaky, but Auloa is always fun) and it reminded me, again, that I don't hate cycling.

Once home, I grabbed my trusty sidekick and headed to Maunawili Elementary. We joined the Ailani Gardens Community Supported Ag group. So each Sunday we'll pick up a week's worth of local organic fruits and veggies grown in Waianae. Today we got Kale (Sky's favorite!), headless broccoli (no heads grown here), green beans, salad greens, mini-kale for salads, starfruit and basil. I took this of my little helper carrying our veggies back to the car: 

I think it looks a little like a paparazzi pic. I need to get her some big sunglasses for next weekend. Or loan her mine. 

Afterwards I met Amy for a coffee at the beach. We had Sky take our pic - turns out she's not so hot on the other side of the camera.. Bet you can't guess which one is me. And yeah, I have other shirts. I swear.