Easter, kind of

So today I guess was Easter, although I didn't really notice so much. It didn't pass quite as unnoticed as Easter 2007 when I was living in Arizona and had nowhere to go, one week before my Ironman and I recovered from my last, hard 50-mile bike ride with a trip to Cold Stone, but it certainly did not involve me sitting at Easter brunch and eating lots of Cadbury chocolate egg-shaped things.

Obviously I mentioned yesterday that my knee is not happy with me at the moment, so although Sunday would normally be long-run day, it was determined that skipping it might be a better idea. This, unfortunately, does not mean that I could just lie around in my pajamas all morning, even though that seemed like a really good idea to me this morning. Nope, instead the time would be made up on the bike, and the time I missed on the transition run yesterday would be made up with swimming. I'd almost rather have spent an extra 45 minutes on the bike... almost. This presented a problem, as I awakened this morning in my parents house up on Squam lake, which is approximately 70 miles from my pool. At least my gym doesn't care about Easter, either, so I didn't have to worry about shortened hours. I did, however, have to worry about getting there, and getting in what was now going to be a 4-hour bike ride.

The plan was to ride at the lake and then drive down. This, however, did not seem like it was going to work out quite like I wanted. For one thing, it was windy out. I mean really windy. Like windier than I ever experienced in Kona. But unlike Kona, it was also cold. It was so windy that the wind actually blew the ice away, so the lake is now open water, and that water looked like the ocean on a stormy day. Bright and sunny, but still not so inviting. I sat and debated my plans while I drank my cup of tea and did the Sunday crossword, wondering what might be the best option. My preferred option was to stay right where I was all day, but that obviously wasn't going to happen.

Normally I'm one of those people who will go out and deal with almost any weather. I'll run when it's snowing like crazy, I'll do my long rides in the rain when it's 40 degrees out, I'll fight the wind. But when I finally went outside to see what it really felt like, I almost immediately knew that there was no way I was going to want to spend 4 hours riding in that weather. Maybe an hour, maybe two, but four? No, thank you. The windchill was down in the teens and the temperature itself was in the 20's. I did that once in December, and it was just incredibly unpleasant. So, it was time to formulate a new plan that involved riding the trainer, which was also about 70 miles south. So I decided to drive home, get my swim stuff, go swim, go back home and ride the 4 hours in the basement. I haven't done a long ride like that on the trainer in probably at least 6 weeks now.

I made it home pretty quick, in spite of a more-than-usual presence of state troopers on the highway, got my swim stuff and was off to the surprisingly crowded pool. I actually lucked out with a lane as someone was leaving just as I got there. I had a pretty good swim and then headed home. I hit the trainer at 12:30. Had I been home all day I would've been done swimming by 7:30, on the trainer at 8 and done by noon, but that's just the way things go sometimes. Mom was serving Easter at 1. I was pedaling away until 4:30. Oh, well. Everyone understood. And with my relatives, I don't think there was anyone there who I don't see anyway on an almost-weekly basis. Plus, she was having her standard ham, beans and potato salad, which isn't really my kind of meal. I used to love ham, even after I asked my mother when I was a kid, "how do they get the ham out without hurting the pig?" and learned the awful truth. But I really don't eat anything that comes from a pig anymore. Because, well, they're pigs. Not that pigs eat pigs to wind up the way they do, but still. I never liked bacon anyway. And baked beans? While regular beans I like, I don't really want to eat anything that comes with a cube of pork fat in the can. Potato salad used to be one of my favorite things. Only the homemade kind, because any supermarket version was terrible. My grandmother still does it the best. But as of late I've just become overwhelmingly aware of the fact that essentially it is potatoes mixed with mayonnaise, and, well, that just seems gross. I used to be the kind of person who would order extra mayo on my sandwiches. And seriously, I used to wonder why exactly I was fat.

So what the heck was that bit of rambling about? Oh, right, I skipped Easter for an indoor bike ride. I do not regret my choice to ride indoors. However, I had forgotten how much harder it is when you really have to keep pedaling the whole time. It was good to use the computrainer though so I could see my wattage and keep the heart rate where it was supposed to be the whole time, so it was certainly a good workout in that regard. Only issue was that otherwise this would've been a recovery ride, but without the run, I was stuck with some real work! I made a judgement error though in preparing my fuel, and as a result I was pretty drained by the end of the ride, but at least tomorrow is an easy day.

So now I'm sitting here, not full of ham and potato salad, but instead full of supplements that hopefully will aid in the quick healing of my knee, which is also currently wrapped in an ice pack. Really hoping that it goes away quick, and I'm certainly doing all that I can to make sure that happens. For now though, my ride has left me overwhelmingly sleepy, so I think I'm going to be getting to bed as soon as the ice comes off!