still doing it wrong

some time between when i figured out how to countersteer and yesterday, i forgot how to countersteer. worse, i was doing exactly the opposite: pushing on the inside handlebar. doh.

today i had plenty of practice doing it right, up and down sawyer camp trail. i saw a deer and a fallen tree which a park employee was chainsawing into pieces. later i saw some other parks guys cleaning some toilets and i considered telling them they'd gotten the short end of the duty roster today, but there's no need to rub it in.

it began to sprinkle up there, and i picked up the pace a little to get home without getting too wet. near the end of hte trail i encountered a chinese woman with her blast shield down. that always makes me laugh, especially on a day like this when there's no sun at all. what's it for, then? rain? that'll only make things worse.

i felt plenty-o-cruddy this morning, thinking i owed this to lack of sleep, lack of peace-o-mind, lack of sunshine. turns out, it was just lack of bicycling.

i'm cycling three times a week. i'm still slow as could be, but i'm also losing weight, which will help. i'm thinking of modifying my training to include more ride days (because i enjoy it) and/or to include speed work (because i'm slow) and hill work (because that's where i'm at my worst).

today i tried something on the hills which was an extension of my ralston ascent (sidetrack: ascending some incline on sunday, i thought to myself, "i'm not a bad climber, but unfortunately, i'm not wearing my climbing shoes. ha!") strategy: i kept an 80rpm cadence rather than my 90 goal, and used 1 gear higher than i normally would have (which is to say, 1 above absolute granny). this seemed to keep my HR at an acceptable level, and give me a slight boost of speed -- though i'm not positive whether i'd get a better gain from easy gear + high cadence. have to pay more attention next time. so much room for tweaking and improving, hooray.