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<\/p>\nI finally dragged my eyes open at around 8am, which was unfortunate, as we had envisioned getting on the road closer to 7 or 7:30.\u00a0 I rolled over and texted my Mom, “Woke up late, story of my life, will be there closer to noon-ish.”<\/p>\n
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One of a kind and always late…<\/em><\/p>\n Most triathletes, cyclists, and all around sporty-spice people are early risers.\u00a0 I have friends who often end their runs before the sun comes up.\u00a0 I am in bed until the sun comes up unless it’s an absolute necessity.\u00a0 I’ve gotten to points where I have regularly been able to wake up in the 7am hour, but as soon as I take a break my normal body rhythm goes directly back to waking up as close to 9-10am as I allow it.<\/p>\n My husband and I both plodded out of bed to do our respective pre-bike things.\u00a0 This morning, since I was groggy, I pretty much walked around in a fog forgetting how to be a human, and he did just about everything – filling our bottles, finding the helmets, and pumping up the tires.\u00a0 We trade off being the one who can actually function before noon and today was not my day.<\/p>\n Finally, we had all our ducks in a row and coasted out the driveway a few minutes before 9am.\u00a0 The air still had a little refreshment in the wind gusts, in the shade at least, but I could tell that would be short lived.\u00a0 Our neighborhood was still pretty sleepy itself, with just a few people setting out to take their dogs for a morning stroll, and traffic seemed to be following suit.\u00a0 It’s a refreshing change from 9am on a weekday, when everyone out and about is cranky because they’re probably late to work, these people are most likely out to start a day off of shopping, or brunch, or something somewhat enjoyable.<\/p>\n We were heading north that day for two reasons.\u00a0 First, our plan included an 80 mile ride, and my parents’ house is exactly 38.5 miles from ours.\u00a0 Second, Austin City Limits music festival was downtown (about 10 miles the opposite way), and with the thousands of natives and visitors partying it up down there… you either go embrace it or stay the hell away.\u00a0 Since we weren’t doing the former, we wanted to avoid it like the plague. But unfortunately, we’d heard of the rare gifts on sale<\/a> in that very pageant, and as the adage goes, curiousity kills the cat…or should I say, cats.<\/p>\n To go north from our neighborhood, there are two decent options – either up Metric, which has hills but they aren’t steep, or up Steck-o-slavakia (as the Strava segment calls it), and you get the climbing done with straight away and all at once about a mile and a half into your ride.\u00a0 Metric is the most direct route, but Steck leads to Rudy’s breakfast tacos, so of course, that won.\u00a0 We huffed our way up and meandered through streets and parking lots until we turned into our favorite bike breakfast place.<\/p>\n Here’s the thing.\u00a0 I eat pretty healthy most of the time.\u00a0 However, I’ve made the agreement with myself that anything I eat during a bike ride doesn’t count in the grand scheme of things.\u00a0 The bonus of this?\u00a0 I can now eat almost anything on the bike.\u00a0 Real food is so much tastier than dumb old gu gels, and I knew the time for those would come later, so I enjoyed the heck out of the peppery bar-b-que sauce, salty beef, and soft warm flour tortilla.\u00a0 I enjoyed it quickly, because, as we slept in, we were behind schedule.<\/p>\n Because Jollyville Road is essentially the northern bicycle promenade area, we saw at least three other group rides coming or going.\u00a0 Even if we were riding solo ourselves today, it was awesome to be part of the haphazard mid-morning cyclist’s parade.<\/p>\n Eventually we turned onto Parmer Road, which ended the point of the route in which we needed to pay attention to directions.\u00a0 Get to Parmer, go straight for 30 miles, that was it.\u00a0 Easy on the brain, except when you turn into it and WHOOF the wind hits you.\u00a0 “Nothing as bad as Ironman day,” I thought, and we started our trek north.<\/p>\n Sometimes cycling is filled with amazing sights and sounds and fresh country air.\u00a0 Sometimes you pick the most convenient route, and the sights are cars, roads, and more cars, the sounds are horns and road noise, and the smells are dead armadillos and skunks.\u00a0 Either way, the sun was shining, we were outside, and riding bikes, so life wasn’t so bad.\u00a0 We ate a gel, we stopped at Sonic for a Powerade bottle fill, and while the traffic thinned out, the weather took a turn for the steamy, and the constant construction started.<\/p>\n Poor Zliten and his unlucky tires lately!<\/em><\/p>\n I know that the crews were probably much more pressured to make progress on the driveable parts of the road, but the bike lanes were a mess for miles.\u00a0 Often, they had deep grooves, were blocked off, had loose gravel spread over them, or had tons of debris.\u00a0 Even with the obstacles, we were making good time until two miles from our turn, Zliten told me to stop and we examined his mostly-flat tire.\u00a0 The construction debris had claimed a victim, and whatever it was put a decent size hole in his tire as well as flattening his tube.<\/p>\n You know what makes the best tire patch? An empty GU wrapper.\u00a0 And I had one, sticky and ready to go.\u00a0 We patched up his tire, well, he did as I watched and gave moral support, changed the tube, and we were off.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/adjustedreality.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Oct10-2.jpg\")
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