I like to ride my bicycle.

I like to ride my biiikeee!!

If nothing comes of this whole triathlon business and I decide I never want to do another one ever again, it'll still be worth it because it got me to buy my road bike.

I love cycling with a furious passion.

Randy and I have been doing long rides every Saturday and each week they get longer and faster: 20 miles, 25, 30, 40, 45. We go out in the country and just cruise along the almost-empty roads, enjoying the farmland scenery as it unrolls beside us. Once we get going, I feel like I could go on forever, pedaling until the roads run out.

That's how I feel on the flats anyway. On the hills, I generally feel like I want to fall over and not get up again. I've got the technique down on the flats and the downhills, but man, as soon as we hit an incline, my speed and efficiency just plummet.

I just don't know how to tackle those bad boys. It seems like I can never find the right balance of power and efficiency. If I go up in a harder gear, I can keep my speed up a tiny bit more, but I end up wearing myself out. But the second I drop down to a lower gear, the slowdown in speed is just painful and I feel like I'm spinning to nowhere. So once I figure that out, I might just be unstoppable!!

Our long rides have also forced me to step into the world of performance drinks and gels, which I have always been pretty resistant to doing. On our first long ride, I swore that I would not eat a gel, no sir, not on a train or a plane or in a box or with a fox, etc. But halfway through our ride, I was exhausted and out of energy and my only option was a razzberry clifshot.

I took one bite of that thing and spit it right back out. Randy, on the other hand, was chowing it down like it was the tastiest thing he'd ever eating. To me, it tasted an awful lot like the inside of a bad, organic generic Nutrigrain bar -- too sweet, with the gross undertaste of the rice syrup. Yuck! I ate a tiny bit more just so I could keep riding, but I was darned if I was going to do that again.

But the next ride, I discovered the answer to all my problems -- in a tiny little cube caled a ClifBlok. Instead of being the consistency of toothpaste like the gels, these are kind of like gummy bears. I keep them in the freezer, so by the time I eat them on the road, they're not cold but aren't all oozy and gross like the gels.

I've even been drinking Endurox after the rides, just because it actually does make my legs a little stronger the next day.

So yeah. I've bought into the great, grinding machinery of the sports products industry.

But the very best thing about these rides is that, since they last 2.5 hours and we ride and ride and I sweat and sweat, when we go out for dinner on Saturday night, I eat just about whatever I want. And I have beer. And it is ALL good.

There's a century ride out of Hillsborough in August and I am all about it. I'll be there on my bike -- you can count on that!