I headed off at 10.45am for this tragic and great cycle. Determined to be back in 3.5hrs to have lunch at a reasonably respectable hour for once.
Started off as a good time out in the sunshine with some sweet beats in my headphones, sunnies on, legs pumping and the encouragement of my coaches instructions for today's training ride ("it's meant to be easy") in my mind- I got to focus on just completing the miles, no stress about pace or heart beats happening in my head.
Thoughts jumping around from "What? Lambs in July!? No way!" to "I wonder what God's planning for the next stage of my life?" to "Please don't kill me , please don't kill me!...phewf!... Thank you Lord for giving me another moment of life (as trucks blasted past desperate to deliver their Pams frozen pastry or Pete's drycleaning equipment). What a day. What a ride this is gonna be.
Hills and speedy straights passed by and soon I hit the roadworks just before Levin. I boosted through them to avoid holding up any cars in the 30km/h cone-lined section.
This was when the tragedy (#1) hit, I noticed my sunnies sliding down to the librarians glasses position...
And, as I went to re-adjust them, I realised I had just lost the left 'arm' (or whatever it's called) of my gangsta reflective (or pervert...like my Dad calls them, hha!) sunnies during my impromtu the roadworks sprint.
Oh dayum.
However the arm was only gone on the side away from traffic, so the sheep in fields alongside still thought I was slick as, while the cars saw my true hobo status.
With my new hobo 'one-"armed" sunnies cyclist look I hit Levin, I was 10mins speedier than last week so hadn't hit halfway time mark yet....
I thought, "Sweet, I get to check out whats beyond Levin on this back road" (FYI not much at all is beyond...just a chill rural neighbourhood, hha).
Que tragedy #2, after heading back through Levin and Shannon adjusting my sunnies every few minutes, I hit a sudden ride in the road surface (due to an overbridge) really hard and with a woosh of air my front tyre was flat. I stopped and changed the tyre and got back on the road to get back for some lunch. It was a sweet day to be stuck in the middle of the wop wops (see the pic I took) but it would not be cool surviving on my one bottle of Nuun electrolytes for much longer...in fact I might have started over heating as well as being hangry :P
I headed off again, but in less than minute it appeared my spare tyre was also now dead flat. Cool. This is cool. Riding 26km+ with a flat is cool...
I just laughed to myself and thought ah well a bit of extra technique work (as catching a rim is not hard and the fall when you do so IS hard, haha!) and went on my way with each revolution of the flat tyre adding an extra beat to my soundtrack, haha. A little extra boom-chicka-boom never hurt anyone did it? :) :P I feel it definitely hurt my poor bikey wikey though :(
Anyways, I made it back those remaining kms (an hour)- a tragic and great long ride all done.
A good dose of Vitamin D, good beats, gangsta new one-armed sunnies, sweet views (waterfalls, mountains and ranges) and 97.8km gained and no fingers lost from the extra vibrations (resulting from zero front tyre shock absorption), hehe!
Living the dream. 100% recommend ;) :D