Alright, alright, I'm a weenie! Despite the fact that it was 45 degrees and sunny (our nicest day yet), I let winds strong enough to buffet my 3/4-ton truck around keep me from riding. I know, I should have been out there anyway. The wind would have just added a toughening element to my training.
It didn't help that I'm feeling a bit dispirited after my outing with Pali yesterday. We did 10 miles, and they weren't significantly slower on her knobby tires than they would have been on Madeleine's skinny ones. Unfortunately, within minutes my shoulder was really hurting. The wider stance of my mountain bike handlebars seems to be more than my shoulder wants to handle. The pain was worse if I wrapped my hands around the grips so that my thumbs were underneath. That position seemed to twist my arm just enough to be a problem. It was slightly better if I just draped my hand over the top of the grip, but that caused numbness issues. Arrgh!
Of course, the worst part is that I'll be riding a mountain bike in Bhutan. I don't know if its handlebars will be as wide as Pali's, but I'm a little worried. The pain was little enough that three aspirin mostly took it away after I was done, but putting up with it for three to four hours of riding a day might be a bit much. I think I'll look into a prescription for stronger pain relievers that won't also put me to sleep.
So, I'm using the wind today partly as an excuse to rest my shoulder and put off another ride that will confirm how much the mountain bike handlebars hurt. Tomorrow is another day....
As my friend Lisa said in an e-mail today, "my aches and pains hurt when I do and hurt when I don't, so I keep doing." What else is there to say?
