Dancing with Coyote

At Cherry Creek

Coyote dances

red face grin

slash of fur

in my space I wonder

wheels turning

at the message from the Yei.

On a lark

It’s hard to ride a bike when it’s seventeen degrees outside.  The simple act of opening the door and pushing it out the door into the semi-light of 7:30 becomes a force of will. 

I do it anyway.  Byron is waiting at the Starbucks on 30th and Colorado and the idea that someone else is riding with me and sharing my pain is comforting.  It’s also the first day of my training year, the cycling equivalent of the first day of the rest of my life: day one of base one.

Of course, I’ve already been training, hundreds of miles and hours in the pool, but that all gets lumped into the ‘preparation’ period’, all of the time before base one and after my last race. 

Endurance and speed work for the next couple of months.  Endurance means long rides like today’s up to Larkspur.  The first goal today is not to sweat, but Byron always pushes the pace a bit beyond my comfort zone.  Sometimes I get to reciprocate, but when we ride too fast, I can feel the rivulets of sweat on my back.  At seventeen degrees, this can get ugly.

Byron pulls away on the climb to Palmers Lake and then waits in front of the Speedtrap coffee shop.  It really is a speed trap today; a cop car is nestled along the south wall of the building, out of sight from anyone heading towards Monument.  A coffee and then we’re rolling on the loop to Larkspur, seventeen gorgeous miles with a deceptive climb up to the Palmer Divide. 

It all passes quickly: conversations with Byron, my cheese sandwich, the numb toes and fingers, the brief headwind as we headed north.  Too soon, it’s a fist bump as Byron turns off for his house in Old Colorado City and I head a few miles up the canyon to Manitou and a hot bath. 

Eighty miles in the books and the new year has already begun.