I'm so glad I drove my car today

I've hit that mid-training cycle slump where I hurt, I'm tired, nothing's funny any more and I can't sleep. Small slights become worthy of a three generation long blood feud, and even worse, I've stopped caring about puppies and kittens. And rainbows.

Fuck 'em all.

So I used a Groupon for a massage - usually these can be a waste of time at best, but lucky for me, the awesome masseur was a hiker and really knew where to put the pressure to get all the gunk out of my muscles.


I didn't even consider riding my bike the 7 miles to the massage place. Well, okay, I did, but dismissed the idea as silly as I'd be undoing any good of the massage right away.

One has a much different perception of traffic when one hasn't driven for almost three weeks. Sitting in gridlock with the A/C running, listening to music, not having to dodge doors and road debris. Awesome.

I got to the massage place, and met the masseur. We talked for a few minutes about where I hurt, and he got to work. 

He used a lot of pressure and it hurt like hell while he was doing it, but I feel really great now. Even the glute that's been sort of sore for a few weeks feels fine, and the Achilles tendon's finally stopped bothering me, although I don't think I can chalk that up to the massage.

I feel so good right now I'm not even dreading the hill repeats on the bike tomorrow.

I'm so glad I didn't drive my car today

Lately, I've been on the early shift, which means I'm getting off  work around 3 pm.
This is great as I've got swim practice from 5:30 to 6:30, so the plan today was to ride the bike to work, then come home, shove the gym stuff into the panniers and head out.

It's 6 miles to the gym (downhill there, uphill back), and when I left work the wind was blowing so I almost talked myself out of taking the bike.

"Oh, it's windy. I'll be hurting coming back, and I have to run tomorrow morning."

It's close enough to summer that the trip home is in the daylight (not that riding in the dark ever stopped me, but it does make a handy excuse), so eventually I won (or lost, depending on how you look at it) the argument with myself and rode the bike to the gym.

I'm so very glad I didn't chicken out and take the car.

The wind was dying down a bit as I headed out, so it certainly wasn't unmanageable and I had a lovely ride under the blue spring sky (the sky in LA is normally sort of a taupe color - the winds blow all the smog out) down to the gym, where I had a wonderful swim with the new coach.

Then, I sat in the steam room, hit the showers and headed back home.

The ride home was just before sunset, so the sky was turning that nice orange color, and the mockingbirds were starting to sing - I love mockingbirds when they're not imitating car alarms outside my bedroom window at 3 am - and these were singing their hearts out (or warning other birds away from the tree. It's all good), treating me to a car alarm-free tune.

I had enough of a tailwind that I didn't even notice the gentle hill, and got home just as the sun set.

Just think what I would have missed had I driven.