Riding impaired...

Today's ride was not easy. Not because it was windy out, not because it was cold out, not because I was bundled up with lots of clothes on, not because my hands froze, not because my feet froze, not because it was getting dark when I got home.

Nope, those weren't the toughest parts of today's ride, the toughest part was riding with a throbbing hangover.

It was another Friday Night in the man cave, aka "The Pig & Whistle", just Alice and I. We started late and ended early in the morning. I have no idea of what time we got to bed. All I remember was opening my eyes at 9 am and realizing I had a scheduled ride with Shaw and Mike at 10:30 am.

I guess I can blame it on my birthday, it's on Sunday and I didn't want to party on Sunday, or I'd be thrashed for work and that's not good. So, instead, Friday night was my birthday party come early.

I was in no condition to ride when I opened my eyes at 9 am. At that moment, I don't even think my blood alcohol was legal to ride. I closed my eyes and the next time I opened them it was 10 am. When I did wake up it didn't take me long to get dressed, I was dressed.

As sick as this sounds, I was looking forward to getting this ride on and over with, just like old times. It was going to be a RUTI ride (Riding Under the Influence). It had been a long time since I had one of those.

Low and behold, first think I did was check my email and both Shaw and Mike had to bail on the ride. Yes. That meant I could get some more sleep and go later, when it would be warmer and my head would feel better, hopefully.

For the next four hours I tried to work, I was teaching myself about Wordpress. Not easy to do and with a throbbing head it was near impossible. I felt like a hungover zombie trying to learn. It was weird, I didn't understand if I was still drunk or in the hangover stage.

At 2 pm I eventually forced myself out the door. I filled up three water bottles and took a protein bar with me. It was NOT going to be a podcast listening workout, that would be too difficult, it was music blaring the entire way.

To say the ride was slow is a understatement. My heart rate was so high and my speed so slow, essentially it was a HHLS workout (High Heart rate Low Speed). Although, I still enjoyed it, I was out there, I was SIU'ing it baby (Sucking it up). If you want to play, you gotta pay.

I had a twisted thought as I was riding. What if I purposely did a hungover / drunk Ironman. Stayed up all night, drank and went right to the start line. Then filmed the carnage along the way. It's amazing how good of an idea that sounds like when you don't have all your facilities with you.

Near the two hour mark my hands and feet started freezing. I had brought money for a greasy hamburger but was too cold to stop and figured it's almost dinner time, we had steaks. For the entire ride, I drank less than one water bottle.

When I got home I was hurting, in the head. Damn, the delayed hangover was kicking in. I had two choices, fight it or start drinking again. I chose the former, I SIU'd it, had an Advil instead and spent the rest of the night learning more about Word Press until 1 am.

I'm proud of myself for SIUing it and getting on the road to ride. Even though it was cold and I wasn't feeling my best, I did enjoy the ride. No pressure to go fast and it sure beats riding indoors on a trainer. I saw a few other guys out riding and the one thing about riding in November is it's only the die hards out and we never miss a wave to each other opportunity, we're kindred spirits, hard-core cyclists.

It took about 2 hours for the food and Advil to kick to make me feel a LITTLE better. I didn't have my first pee of the day until 6 pm. I had to have a shower when I got home, the smell of my sweat was making me SICK!!! The night before nasty toxins were working there way out.

If the police ever need a non-leathal weapon and don't want to use the taser, the smell of my shirt from today's ride would be perfect. Put it over a criminals face and he's down. Or if you want to extract information from an Al-Qaeda member, I guarantee success.

Long Ride - 2:40:49 / 72.46 km / 27 kph / 135 avg hr