weird

Saturday will be nine weeks since I broke my right collar bone in a bicycle mishap. What's weird is that I'm now a much stronger rider than I was before the accident. Was it the trainer? The 2 weeks (well 1.5 weeks) before resuming any cardio activity? Just plain old stubbornness of not wanting to slow down? A couple of James' friends comments about me not cycling any more? More than likely it was a combination of all of the above. My ave. mph on straight stretches is much improved, my hill climbing is better--not great, but better (it helps being able to get into granny gear now!), my endurance is definitely better. Before I would struggle to get the speed up to 15-16 mph, now I can hit 19-20 mph and hold it for a while, although my average not factoring in hills is more in the 17-18 mph range. I can ride with a group of men that's been doing this a while and not feel like I'm holding them up--Gary still kicks my ass though when he gets warmed up. And the nice thing right now, I'm not the last one up the big hills (I'm still in the back of the pack but not last, yay!). Now, if I could only get my running base built back
up :-(.

Today was a 19.5 mile ride with the country club gang (only 4 of us) with an ave. speed of 14.4 mph (big hills) in 1:21:04. Gary and I got to see 3 deer this morning on the warm-up loop, absolutely gorgeous! Contemplating a 70 mile ride Saturday with Gary, I won't have anybody to come pick me up though if anything goes wrong since James will still be on the road until that evening.