Early Morning Ride

Some things seem pretty simple once you've actually taken a few minutes to think about them.

On Tuesday I wrote about my tentative triathlon training plan for the next five weeks.

Jeff, my triathlon guru, kindly suggested that I try to fit in three bike rides per week. He argued that I needed more time in the saddle since I am the one who clearly identified that cycling is my weakest sport.

Three rides a week? When the heck am I supposed to fit that in?

So I thought about it for about five seconds and decided that before work was a perfectly reasonable answer to that question. Especially these next two weeks when the local pool is still closed for maintenance.

So yesterday morning Doug and I got up at 5am. We pulled on our cycling clothes, dragged the bikes out of the basement, strapped on our helmets and headed off into the early morning light. We were on the road by 5:30am.

Twenty-two kilometres of cycling later, we were back home. It was 6:20am.

During the ride we saw the sun rise in the sky and burn away the early morning mist.

We saw two deer emerge from the mist and watch us as we cycled by and pointed in wonder.

We enjoyed the quiet of normally busy roads and hardly spoke a word as we sped along.

It was absolutely lovely and I have no idea why, in all these years of cycling, it has never occurred to me to go for early morning rides in the summer months when the sun rises before 5am.

Jeff, mon ami, you are a very wise man.