Bad Dog!

Today was the first ride on the new Marin road bike. I will preface this with the admonishment that if you are the type of person who lets your dog roam freely around the neighborhood, I hope you rot in hell.

It’s been cold, windy and rainy since Thursday. The sore throat I felt coming on Friday, got worse yesterday and tried to keep me indoors today. But the sun is out and I’ve been dying to try the new bike. I decided the 9 mile ride would probably be OK so off I went.

A half mile into the ride a dog darted out from somewhere behind me directly in front of the bike. I rammed it in its side before I could slow down. The dog rolled, yelped, got up and ran off. I skidded, came down on my right hand and arm and slid for a wee bit. Enough to tear through my padded gloves, windbreaker and long sleeve shirt and skin. Got up and walked around to make sure nothing was seriously wrong – with either me or the bike. The bike was perfect. I couldn’t have been going more than 10 mph since I was heading uphill.

I decided to finish the rest of the 8.5 miles instead of looking at my knee or elbow since they hadn’t started to hurt yet.  Glad I did because it felt good to be out and this bike performed amazingly well. My average speed before today on this route was around 9 mph and today it was just over 13 mph. That means I did today’s ride 17 minutes faster than my time from a few weeks ago. I’m looking forward to repeating the Bonanza Creek ride later this week to see how much of an improvement I can make.

Route and stats from today’s ride: Google Tracks

Minor flesh wound #1

Minor flesh wound #2