rode my bike on the mall after work today...

rode my bike on the mall after work today
rode through traffic to the mall* itself
after snapping some shots I put the camera in my backpack

was on the cross bike
was thinking cross things
was working on cross things

practice? training?

call it what it was... call it what it is
I was riding my cross bike in cyclocross-like situations


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org

The National Mall is an open-area national park in downtown Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. Officially termed by the National Park Service the National Mall & Memorial Parks,[2] the term commonly includes the areas that are officially part of West Potomac Park and Constitution Gardens to the west, and often is taken to refer to the entire area between the Lincoln Memorial and the Capitol, with the Washington Monument providing a division slightly west of the center


now I am sore
people say it is a good sore... but not really... really just sore
rode on a few of the grass rectangles that make up the mall
rode the hard packed singletrack and tried to work on my cornering
I tried to maintain speed longer and I tried to accelerate out of the turns
I tried these things because it is my nature to sit up and coast through the turns

cyclocross is about attacking
I need a place to rest and recover
I just can not sustain the output of power
I am unable to allow myself to feel that much pain

so I tried to maintain a speed just below a sprint
hammering on the straights
cornering around the trees
trying to get speed on the straight
repeating the same loop many times only to move to another grass quadrant on the mall to repeat the exercise

people looked on as I did my thing
I was aware of them... some were aware of me... others were aware of nothing
one dog lunged and attacked each time as I passed
on the third pass the owners retracted the thirty foot leash
the cell phone talkers and the head phone wearers were blind to my approach
erasing one of their five senses
refusing to use any of their other senses

got home and walked the dogs
by the time i was back from walking the dog the boys were back from their friend's house down the block
then the usual madness
the madness which is the energy of two young boys