Twenty Three Miles

I didn't do a 'ride' today. I never set out to put on any real mileage, I was even kind of thinking I'd try to take it easy today, and yet just moving myself hither and thither netted me twenty-three miles. It's not really all that astounding, there are people that ride twice that in a daily commute. But, it's a couple gallons of gas in my truck. It's twenty-three miles I wouldn't have ridden otherwise, whether or not it was a 'ride'. It was twenty-three miles during which I could make my legs harder than they were when I woke up this morning.

The greatest wrestling coach, pretty much ever, Dan Gable, used to say that every minute of his life he was training. If he had to get across the University of Iowa campus, he did it at a run. My 'commuting' mileage could also be 'training' mileage, it's just a matter of perspective. Why not hammer on the way home from the grocery store? A fifty pound bike loaded with thirty pounds of crap is probably good resistance training. One hundred forty miles is a long way to travel in a day, particularly if you expect to finish by running a marathon. I'll probably need to seize every single opportunity I can get to prepare myself. One smelts iron with great heat and effort after all.