Bad Luck

Dan, James, and I decided to do the Minnesota IRONMAN Bike Ride this year as fun way to get together and enjoy the outdoors at the same time. However it seems that I have been cursed with a string of bad luck this year that I hope will not affect the outcome of 100 mile ride at the end of April.

To start I hurt myself playing hockey at the beginning of this year suffering from a high ankle sprain. Something I had never heard about and would have thought was nothing special. Now 4 months later as I am finally able to return to sports, however not yet fully recovered I am starting to grasp how serious it is. In fact the doctor actually told me that I should have broke my ankle because I would have healed up sooner and not suffered the chance of reinjury in the future. Now if that wasn't bad enough my last ride last year resulted in a number of broken spokes, a flat tire, and of course my tire was now out of true.

As the weather near the end of May and beginning of April was starting to look nice for a change I decided to get my bike back in for repairs. No sooner did I get it back home and plan to start riding regularly again then the weather decided to plummet into the low 30s and 40s and a permanent rain cloud moved in. Almost two weeks later we finally have clear blue skies. I was so pumped last night, I packed up everything for work and set my alarm clock nice and early so I could ride the 24 miles into work today. I was looking forward to getting in close to 50 miles round trip today as I enjoyed the low 50s this morning and the clear blue skies as I started out. About 3 miles into my ride I downshifted as I hit my first hill, it wasn't until a little way over the top that I realized that I couldn't shift back into a higher gear. I pulled over and took a look trying to figure out what was wrong, unfortunately my untrained eyes where unable to find any problems so I was forced to turn around and head back home in a low gear. I actually found it to be quite frustrating trying to maintain a normal speed when you have to basically run in place to do it. I guess on the bright side I got in 6 miles today.

So after driving in I realized that with only working Monday and Tuesday this week before taking off the rest of the week to close and move into my new house, that I am most likely going to not have time to get it fixed and will be putting off training for yet another week. Wish me luck, hopefully I will survive the end of April :)