The Open Road

It calls me sometimes like a phantom voice in my head. The open road is my long lost savior. When the world closes in on me and everything seems bleak, she is there ready, willing and accepting of me. I really think that I find true peace only on miles of empty blacktop.

It's been hard on me these last couple of weeks, being restricted as I have been. It's a Saturday today and I only put in in 2 1/2 hours. A month ago it would be at least 4 hours and maybe longer if the weather wasn't horrible. I keep telling myself to pace myself, let all the injuries heal before you push yourself again, but honestly it's really hard to limit myself like that.

I sometimes daydream about riding the big mountains of the blue ridge. As I drove through south west Virginia a couple of weeks ago I almost screamed because their they stood in all their might, just waiting for me to conquer them. I'll be there next year, and those mountains will meet their maker. I've come to conquer you, that's what I say every time I'm about to race a moutain race. Finally, I can back that statement up.

I'll miss the open Mississippi road. My house in Rural is only a mile and half away from nowhere. And nowhere is my favorite place to be on a bike. In nowhere there are no people and no people means no cars. It's just me, the blacktop and a steady cadence. I finally started bucking up again and tossing it into the big ring--KU style. I had been little ringing it for the last couple of months in an effort to help my legs recover from all the races.

I just burned out hard this year. It comes with the territory and also the geography. It's just too damn hard to race in Mississippi. Everything requires driving and lots of it. There were only two races this year in Jackson and both of them were more than 30 minutes from my house. In the future, one half of my races will be within riding distance. It makes things easier.

So the open road calls me again. Dusty roads weren't made for walking and spinning wheels weren't made for stopping. Miranda Lambert, she's got a point.