Mary Poppins

I admit it, if I don't, someone else who happens to have the good fortune to live with me will. Sunday morning was cold. Riding my bike is neat, I love it, but I still have issues with riding in sub 35 degree weather. Go ahead, make fun of me, but that is too darn cold for bike riding. That's why I went downstairs, back to the indoor trainer.

It's been at least four months of riding with Troy Jacobsen's Spinerval series, or following Dennis Moriarty's training. But I needed to ride 56 miles and I was mentally tired of both of them. What was I going to do? Flipping through the channels (yes we still pay for cable), I came to the Family Channel and there was one of my all-time favorite actors, Dick Van Dyke, dressed like a chimney sweep! It was the beginning of Mary Poppins. Perfect timing on my part.

I immediately decided to ride near the cadence and in the gear I want to use at the Disney World 1/2 IM next month, the gear I'm going to catch Jan and Amanda in (no doubt they will beat me out of the water, but that's it). This was fate, I was watching one of the most famous Disney movies of all time on television and I'm going to Disney! During every commercial I pretended I was riding uphill and put the bike into harder gears.

Two hours and forty-six minutes later I had completed the 56 mile bike. For the first time ever I averaged over 20mph for an extended period of time riding indoors. The movie ended as I was picking things up. Perfect, a true fairy-tale ending, it was supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.