Moose encounters, long rides and skipped transition runs

My plan to escape to the north to avoid the rain worked flawlessly. I awakened this morning at 6am to see daylight and a complete lack of rain. It was overcast, but did not look threatening. I was concerned with how cold it might be out there, but since I was wearing my coldest weather riding outfit, minus the face mask, and it was above freezing, I was surprisingly comfortable. Yes, once again I was riding in the high 30's and eventually low 40's, but given that I was able to ride some really tough hills, not face much traffic, only deal with 2 traffic lights in 90 miles (one of which I just take a right turn at, so it almost doesn't count) and a great St. Croix training hill I'm going to think of as "Beast, Jr." then I guess riding in New Hampshire isn't so bad. I mean, how many other places are you going to come across the self-proclaimed "Shugah Guy" selling pure maple syrup out of the back of his truck? Or ride by lakes with ice still on them, snow in the woods, and a few die-hards still out skiing? I happened to ride up to Waterville Valley and things are still looking pretty good up there.

Oh, but of course the other fun part about riding up here is your chance of running into some interesting wild life. The chances increase dramatically the earlier you venture out, and starting a little before 7 was on the late side for me, but apparently that didn't matter to the moose I came across. This is at least the third time I've seen a moose on a bike ride up around here, always in different spots. This time I was on route 113 in Sandwich (the town, not the food) I was riding up a hill so I wasn't going all that fast, and right there on the left side of the road was the moose, staring at me. For some strange reason anytime I come across these things instead of running away from me, they always start running up the road in the same direction I'm heading. I haven't tried ramming one with my bike yet, but I'm guessing the moose would win. So I just rode sort of slowly until it finally wised up and made a turn towards the woods and was no longer a threat for a collision. If you've never seen one up close, they're HUGE. Bigger than horses by quite a bit. This one had no antlers so it was a little less intimidating, but still. A couple of summers ago on that same stretch of road I came across a black bear. I have met up with bears a couple of times also, but they seem to be better at running away from you than the moose, thankfully.

Anyway, the rest of the ride went by fairly fast even though my speed was pretty slow. The route I chose was hopefully harder than what I'll face in St. Croix, although the conditions were just a tad different. The sun did come out after about 3 hours though, so that was nice. Upon my return the plan was to do a transition run, but even while riding I was thinking that just might not happen. That knee pain I think I mentioned seemed to not be doing so well, not a big problem on the bike, but it didn't seem to have healed miraculously in 24 hours, and my hopes were not high for the run to happen. So when I finished up, I didn't even change my clothes before I threw on my shoes to take a little test run. It didn't take long for me to decide that running was probably not such a good idea. I mean, I can make it several steps with no pain at all, but then I'll take a step that hurts enough to stop be in my tracks. It hurts just below my kneecap, pretty sure it is the patellar tendon. I don't know exactly what the problem is, but I really hope that it's not too severe and doesn't stop me for long. I'm a bit less panicky now after the other little setbacks I've encountered, but it sure would be nice to spend a whole season without any aches or pains like this!