Today was one of those days on the bike that I truly cherish. Having all day to get the training ride in, there was no harried breakfast and rushing out the door to train followed by the mad dash to the office to only sit and stare out my window at the glorious blue sky. Today was the complete opposite. A little bit of a sleep-in, could have done with longer but a certain grey cat needed his food…

A linger over my new favorite breakfast concoction of oat bran, almond milk, chopped apple, cinnamon and cottage cheese. An extra mug of chai tea and some liberal web surfing helped ease me into my day. With nothing on the agenda, I took advantage and got down on the floor for a most excellent hour of power yoga. Just me, Baron Baptiste, the laptop and that grey cat. My mind was calm and my body was flowing with restorative energy. Pretty darn nice for a Monday.

Then the type “A” in me took over and I was suddenly preparing a massive pot of couscous, getting my veggies prepped for lunch, making my lunch and snacks (for Tuesday), doing laundry, putting away laundry and just generally trying to do 75 things at once. Enter Marc. “He lets go for a ride.” Perfect.

This other stuff can wait. Hastily clean up the kitchen – put the couscous (measured out into exactly 1/4 cup servings in little ziploc bags) in the freezer and get going. Pulled on the hot white Kingsbridge shorts with my super fly Ottawa Cross jersey and me and he were out the door.

Amazing what a few pedal strokes can do. As quickly as I became wound I was unwound (is this a word?). Rolling along, connecting, chatting and getting ready to hit the trails. Today is an “easy” day. So off to the woods we rolled. Practice and more practice in the sand. Keep the feet turning. Look ahead. Don’t look at the swingset! Accelerate into the sand. Pedal. Pedal. Pedal. “That’s it – good job”. Wow – how I love hearing those words. Almost as good as hearing “I won”. We rolled along some of our favorite trails off to scout out some new-to-us sections. What a lot of sand. And deep. An excellent place to return to on a “hard” day. I wanted to practice going fast. Going fast downhill. Going fast over and onto bridges. Going fast over fallen trees (i.e. barriers). Onto the “bridge” loop. Ah, the calm of the early morning resurfaced and we flowed. I chased. He chased. We rode together. Encouraging. Discovering. Feeling it.

In the end we were smiling. Smiling in our success. Smiling because of the ride. On and off the bike. Nothing quite like it. Lucky me.