You Can Always Go Home
Sundays are bike + run days. I ride for time or distance, then follow it with a run, adjust to the jarring transition from legs churning like a windmill to legs thick and heavy like sacks of water balloons tight and full and ready to pop.
My sprint tri is in two weeks. Even though I fell way behind in my training, spent three weeks doing nothing, then two more unable to swim or strength train, I’m getting less anxious. It feels good to be back on my training schedule. I simply do what I can, as hard as I can, each day.
On Sunday I rode my long route for the first time since last summer. I debated taking this route until the final minute, when the last option to turn whizzed by. I hadn’t even driven down this road in weeks, so I didn’t know what shape it was in. For a long time, the westbound lane was under construction, the shoulder ripped to shreds.
If the road gets too bad, I thought as I headed east, I can always turn around and go home.
Biking for me is different from running. My head gets lazy when I bike. My thoughts drift off and leave my body to fend for itself. As a result, my legs sometimes forget that I can pull the pedals up as hard as I can push them down, and I slow down. I have to remind myself frequently what proper biking technique should feel like.
So on Sunday, I’m dawdling down the road, coasting up and down the hills like I’m on some pleasant carnival ride, scanning the pavement for smushed walking sticks (they grow to the size of hot dogs in Texas—apparently everything is bigger here), and I forget to pay attention to the westbound lane. Ten miles out at the bottom of a hill I realize I have no idea if I can get home.
For a moment, I panic. It’s later in the morning than I usually ride, and there is more traffic. The last thing I want to do is ride a narrow shoulder into traffic for the ten miles home.
Isn’t that life, I think. We get so focused on traveling in one direction that we forget to plan for correction, just in case. And before we know it, we’re so far gone that we fear we can never go back the same way again, that maybe we can’t go home.
But here’s the thing. With experience, you learn that you can. Sometimes you adapt, sometimes you simply get lucky. Sometimes the ride is smooth, other times you have to get off and walk in another direction. There is always, however, a way, and if you have faith, you’ll find it.
I got lucky and made it home, bike and tires intact. But I found one more thing I forgot to take into account. I live on the fringe of Texas Hill Country, where the ripple effect of the land tapers off into rolling waves, and the road I traveled was more roller-coaster-like than I remembered. Even though it’s been a few days, my legs can’t seem to forget.
This Sunday, I think I’ll take the same route. Keep my head in the ride this time, give my quads a break. I know what to expect of the road, at least ten miles out. But this time I think I’ll go farther, see what’s over that hill.
More Than Running... 
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