Friday morning I wrote about feeling the tug to go ride my bike while the family was calling me to spend some time with them.  By the evening, I had a different situation arise.  I think I made the right decision with that one as well.

It was a pretty hectic day for me.  The entire day was spent trying to get a site launched that I have been working on for months.  That was interspersed with trying to get my wife’s anniversary present, taking my BMW to Duncan so it can be repaired, and other meetings during the day.  By five o’clock, I was pretty frustrated.

Everything did get done and I was able to make it home in time to go for a ride.  The family had gone swimming at a cousin’s place, so there was no family obligation to keep me there.  They all planned on me being gone for a couple of hours.

While I had wanted to ride Thursday night and was not able to do so, Friday night I had the ride planned but didn’t feel like it.  I didn’t want to go through all the ritual of getting suited up, sticking contacts in my eyes, getting the bike prepped, and then heading out and sweating every drop of water out of my body.  Couldn’t I just do something else?

Nope.  It was time to ride.  Just like I believe it would have been wrong to have ridden Thursday night when my family was wanting me at home, I believe it would be wrong for me let the discipline slide to get on the bike regardless of how I was feeling.  No excuses!

Funny thing is that as soon as I swung my leg over my bike and coasted down the driveway I was fine.  As a matter of fact, my ride that was going to be an hour of looping around Cleveland Park turned into loops of the park and two repeats of Paris Mountain.  33 miles, 2400 feet, and 2 hours later I arrived home.  Yes, I sweated so much that I felt like I had been at the pool with my kids!

The repeats were the first I have done on Altamont Road in some time.  I started up using my “perceived effort” to determine the speed I wanted.  The idea was to go up the first time at a speed that I figured I could match the second time.  This was after having already ridden for an hour at a good pace.

I reached the top the first time in 16 minutes and 33 seconds.  For that time, I felt pretty rough.  However, I turned around and rode back to the bottom.  The second time up I tried a little different gearing but still never looked at my computer.  I felt for a pace that wasn’t too much or too little.  I reached the top the second time in 16 minutes and 43 seconds.

The only frustrating thing on the ride was the new iPhone 3.0 upgrade with the voice activated dialing.  I was trying to listen to some music, but the voice dial kept activating.  I looked at the screen and it was locked and off.  It was about to drive me nuts!

It is a cool feature on the phone and I’m glad to have it.  I’ve just got to figure out how to avoid that problem in the future.  I think I might have the reason it was happening.  I keep my phone in a ziplock bag in my jersey pocket.  Of course, my pocket is getting quite warm and things are pressing up against the phone.  My guess is that something is turning on the phone – a system message, a new wireless signal, or something – and then the warm pressure of the phone pressing against me is causing it to “push buttons.”  Either that or I have a defective ear piece that is causing the voice dial to activate.

Whatever it is, I need to get it solved.  Anyone else have that kind of issue?