THE LONG AND LONELY ROAD

For many months I've been training with a group of people to do an Ironman triathlon. On a typical Saturday, we'll have 6-10 people out to do a ride. Unfortunately for me, 8 of my teammates are in Brazil this weekend doing their Ironman; my race isn't for another month. I was left behind to ride by myself.

Rather than driving all the way out to Malibu to do our regular route, I went back to one of our standards, the San Gabriel River Trail. Normally this is a nice smooth ride, but we had stormy weather this weekend. There were signs of mini-landslides everywhere: large fields of small stones covering the course, flooded tunnels, and even a pair of downed power lines cutting right across the path. Maybe they were telephone lines, but either way I didn't want to mess with them.

Although there's no substitute for the social aspect of a group ride, it was kind of nice doing the ride on my own time. No waiting for people to show up. Restroom break: 2 minutes. And I was able to snap a few photos on the course with my camera phone which I would not have done if I was worried about losing the group.

By the way, out of my 8 teammates in Brazil, the fastest bike time was Ben on a pair of Zipp wheels; number 2 was Steve (14 years older) on his Flash-Points, aka "the cheater wheels".