Reasons to ride.

I took my bike out for a spin this morning. Riding before work always makes me feel tough and virtuous in a way that going to the gym or running never does. There's something about suiting up with shoes, helmet, tights, and gloves and hopping on my totally awesome bike at 6:00 a.m. on a weekday that fills me with the pride of being a "real" triathlete (even though I'm really just a weekend warrior wannabe tri-geek).

Tooling along the path, dodging joggers and bike commuters and too-fat urban squirrels and funky early-morning shadows, I drank in the sprinkler-fresh morning air. I also realized that (except for that brief heart-stopping moment when I enter an intersection, having looked both ways but knowing there's just the very slightest chance that a car was lurking in one of my ever-growing blind spots) I see pretty darn well when I'm on my bike. Particularly on a bike path, the popping-into-my-way-unexpectedly opportunities for pedestrians and other cyclists are minimal, and I'm going just fast enough, and sitting at just the right angle, that my field of vision is maximized and I've got a really good view of what's ahead. During my morning runs, I don't really see more than what's right in front of me, and while I do scan from side to side semi-consciously, I'm often lost in thought and not focusing on much of anything. But on the bike, I can see all that's before me and much of what surrounds. Today it was lush trees and spring flowers and birds and puddles and a little construction and a few people and not too many cars.

One more reason to spend more time in the saddle. Given my goal of riding the whole darn way up Old Stage Road on August 8, I need as many of those reasons as I can muster.