Mind over body

This weekend I finally went and picked up a cyclo-computer for my for my bike so I could start documenting my rides a little bit. Since I still hadn’t used my $50 member rewards money and the accompanying 20% off coupon expired on Sunday I grabbed the computer and a new rear blinky for my bag there and ended up getting cash back instead of actually having to pay anything. Boy does that feel great! Granted I had to spend a bit of money there in the first place to get those rewards but that was long past and at this point it just feels like free money. (My college econ professor who believes getting tax refunds back is ludicrous would flip on me for this but we don’t need to tell him about it now do we?)

Anyway, I threw it on the bike the other night and riding in this morning I noticed a marked difference in my riding style. When I first started commuting by bike from my Adams Morgan apartment I would typically do a little bit of car racing and really hammer out the couple of miles between home and work. As I started to ride more I’d start to purposely make myself ride easier to and from work, typically since I was already tired or had plans to wear myself out sometime soon in another ride or activity. I also began to notice that it was more fun to cruise by cars sitting in traffic without looking like I’m giving it any effort (maybe a little bit of smugness involved there but we’ll leave that for another day J).

Anyway, this morning riding in with my speed displayed right in front of my eyes, I kept drilling it from the stops and continually hammered along until I absolutely had to break for the next light instead of just cruising along like I’ve become accustomed to doing. I can see where this is headed and hopefully this doesn’t start causing me to become a head case analyzing why I’m not hitting such and such a speed on this stretch or why I can’t reach that speed quick enough.

I guess today’s hill ride during my extended lunch will be the first test of how much this thing might affect me mentally. Scott suggested a sleeve to cover the computer for when things like that start to happen; I think I may need to start carrying one around in my jersey pocket. "Easy" days may be hard to come by if I'm always racing my computer.