Riding with the Locals

Since I got to Charlottesville from New Orleans, I've been making a new effort to keep a steady work out schedule. I've followed Tina (girl in my studio) to the gym a few times. I never really liked going to gyms, but I'm slowly admitting to the appeal of a place unaffected by the vagaries of weather. I always tend to drop off working out during the winter, and this gives me a good means to continue on a regular basis.

Furthermore, it looks like I might have found myself a new coach. The story goes, I've been sending out an email every week or so saying I was going for about an hour Thursday mornings at 7am in order to be back in time to go work at the Habitat site. Maybe 2 people have attempted to ride with me. Both sounded like new folks, wish I'd had a chance to actually ride with them. Other folks have complained that the time is too early, blah blah, yea whatever.

I get this email from a woman, and I figure she's a grad student post-doc or some such, and when we began the ride dark and early Thursday morning, I continued to think as such. She knew the area, so I did not have to go my usual route which has a lot of car traffic. Then she kept saying things like, 20 years racing experience in the area, started this bike team, run this bike race, etc etc. I learned later from the UVa Cycling president, that Ruth in fact used to coach for the team, and her husband is one of the owners of Blue Wheel Bicycle! It sounds like the team asked her to coach again, so I will probably see more of her in the future.

We went on a nice 50 mile ride today through the autumnal patchquilt mountains. It's like riding with Tony's group with much more scientific explanation (her background is in neuroscience) of why the pace was aerobic rather than anaerobic, why training with men all the time is tricky for women, why to keep spinning on the downhills. This, interspersed with, this person lives on this farm, had an affair with that person in the local government, Dave Matthews' mother lives here, this road is named Roller because they'd roll barrels down to the boats on James River for shipping, this town was founded during Reconstruction for the quarry then burned to prevent other settlers, etc. We stopped for a brief break at a nice little coffee shop where I told her about Marc who laughed at us weak Americans for taking so many breaks during a ride. The roads constantly amazed us with their colorful foliage.

All in all, a great autumn ride.