Still slightly overdone

This gets harder every year.

I over cooked yesterday and by the time I headed out today I hadn't completely recovered.  I still felt not quite chipper.

But riding around on a beautiful day is more likely to improve how you feel than diminish it.  After a while I felt pretty much OK.

I headed on down to the parking lot on the lawn in front of the Capitol.  They seem to be making progress on the building, the marble looks whiter than I remember it looking so cleaning is part of the exterior work.

 As confirmed by the sign there in the parking lot, the building is closed.

Imagine that, the seat of government is closed.  Fortunately the parking lot is still open.

I found a way to get over to Summit which did not involve climbing the hill up to the Cathedral.  So, OK, there is an alternate route.  But I will probably just be climbing Cathedral Hill in the future.  The alternate is far from ideal and if you climb Cathedral Hill you get a close up look at the other really distinguished old stone building down there.

I rode down Summit and headed back to the north when I reached the point where I could line up a route coming home.  That route leads through Dead Man's Curve.

Of late I have been taking the lane when riding underneath that double overpass with a turn.  Partly this is condition of the pavement which is not ideal over there on the side of the street where bicycles are usually found.  Truth be told, however, the middle of the lane pavement is not a huge improvement.  Part of my reason for preferring the lane is that cars will be cars, they will use whatever pavement is available to them.  Cars routinely cross the center line under that narrow bridge (that's why I call it Dead Man's Curve).  But they also will take the short line coming out of the turn and if a bicycle happens to be present they will just go ahead and squeeze you.

Personally, I find being squeezed to be far more dangerous than being out in the middle of the lane.

So today I was out in the middle of the lane and it was a good thing.  There was some sort of motor vehicle accident over there since the last time I rode through there (yesterday).  In the area where cars expect bicycles to be there was the makings of a bad bicycle experience.

As you can probably also see, the pavement is far from ideal.

85 at the Cattle Barn but the big news over there is that the big horse show scheduled over there this weekend is apparently a paid admission event.  They have rented a fence.

I've been trying to find out a little more about the senior games cycling events.  I did discover that if she had entered the GFR would have finished no worse than 12th in her age group in the 5K Time Trial.  Ride as fast as you can for 3.1 miles.

The results are being posted on line.  The time trial results are not up yet but the 20K Road RAce (12.4 miles) results are up.  My age group went in a time faster than the 60-64 next younger age group, in just under 30 minutes.  You are correct, I would have had no chance whatsoever of hanging with that pace.  Last place time was about 50 minutes.  I probably could have competed for that, but probably would have lost.

Mostly I am just glad that I made it home today, that is always a good result each and every time I set out.