I wonder what other people think; when he was just behind me, I half-turned and said, "Good morning". Am I the only one who thinks he was an ass not to respond at all? In any event, he didn't seem to be going a whole lot faster than me, but I quickly realized I wasn't going to keep up without pushing my heart rate way higher than I wanted to do (and, in fact, I accidentally pushed it up to 132 while verifying that). Still, I was amused that, even after getting my heart rate back down to 120-ish, he didn't make it out of easy sight until he turned off to take the 14th St Bridge, a mile or two later.
Actually, one other piece was that I stopped three different times, just after that, to take pictures. I really wish I'd had a better camera than my phone. The shot above isn't bad, but could be better, especially if I'd brought the tripod. Still, I was glad to be in position to get what I got - to quote the old photojournalism maxim, "F/8 and be there".
The other "exciting" part of the ride came just as I was riding up the hill to the gate at Ft Myer. Some jackass decided that he needed to fly by me with about a foot of clearance. I was irritated, but going to let it go, until I realized he was going to the gate. So I sped up and gave him a little piece of my mind while he was at the guard shack with his window open. That spiked my heart rate up all the way to 163, which surprised me, given it was only 30-ish seconds of hard exertion.
I was pleasantly surprised to get it back down into my target range in only a few minutes, afterward.
Anyway, the incident, combined with a couple other recent happenings, has me reconsidering getting a GoPro, or something similar. I really don't appreciate such behavior. I think I'll talk to my dad about it.
Other than that, a very pleasant ride, and some decent miles in. For the first time, I'll finish all the Strava challenges this month. In fact, I'm pretty sure I'll finish the MTS challenge with several days to go. Decent ride tomorrow, long rides on the weekend, maybe a couple miles with my daughter as well. We'll see.
Oh, and I signed up for the Velobici challenge yesterday (veloviewer mentioned it). It started March 8th, and I was amused to see I've already met the mileage target for it. It's a little bit of a waste, though, as I'm not impressed with their goods. Plus, while I'll do more than respectably, I don't have any chance of winning any of the categories (though I might make top ten in nighttime miles, and could move close to that in the steel category by renaming my bike. Oh, and I figured out a way to cheat so I could reasonably compete in the 'most PRs' category. I see people there with more PRs than miles, so I wouldn't be alone in that, for sure).
And Competitive Cyclist disappointed me by putting their "dollars for hours" program on hold. I guess the demand was much higher than they anticipated, and I think they just couldn't keep up with entering people's miles in the system. Still, I got forty-ish dollars in credit while it lasted, and put a few extra miles in than I would have done, so it wasn't a complete waste, even if it doesn't come back. I hope it does, though; I loved the idea.
Getting back to the actual biking, tomorrow will be another easy day; I might even repeat today's ride, taking my Coolpix A to get some better sunrise shots (though I'll need to take the tripod to make significant improvements; HDRs don't work all that great without that).
Then Saturday should be another hard group ride; hopefully I'll be fully recovered by then. Either way, it should be fun, I think.
And hopefully the Caps can put together a much better game tonight, and win. Go Caps!
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