Run. Bike. Windy Beach

I’m pretty tired after a long day. It started with a run through Riverside – I’m back. I went early – for me, anyway – to take advantage of the cool weather. Running in 60 degree weather is a lot easier than 70 degree weather. I ran the same course this morning that I ran yesterday afternoon and pulled six minutes off my time. Basically, I took a minute a mile off my pace. I came home expecting to shower and immediately head to the beach but those plans got nixed. Instead of going in the morning we decided to go in the afternoon, after LMJ’s nap. To pass the time I ate hamburgers and watched a little bit of golf. Golf sucks. MJ said she wanted to go on a bike ride before spring break was over so I headed to the (new) bike shop to get an inner tube. It’s a miracle I didn’t walk out with a new bike. I started talking to the owner about my triathlon ambitions, and he gave me some really good pointers. It wasn’t anything I didn’t already know but it was stuff that I’ve pushed into the denial part of my brain. Stuff like road bikes are smaller, lighter, and faster than off-road bikes. He also took the time to insist that I show him my bike before he sold me an inner tube to make sure he was selling me what I needed. He wanted me to test ride some road bikes to see the difference, which was clearly a sales pitch but it wasn’t really. I like him a lot more than I like the other bike guy that I’ve been giving money to for the past three years. I can’t believe that I kept going to that jackass who always acted like I was inconveniencing him with my business. I kept going because he’s local and I try to support local businesses as much as I can. So is the new guy but I had to choose Riverside over Avondale – not anymore. We wound up skipping the bike ride so we could make it to the beach before the sun went down. It was a freezing 70 degrees so Grammy and MJ got bundled up and almost bought the baby girl some snow shoes. Seriously, they covered LMJ up in TWO sweatshirts and spent a fair amount of time on the beach making sure her ears were covered. We didn’t want her losing an ear to Jack Frost. It’s funny because I’m on the extreme opposite of the temperature spectrum and loved the windy beach weather. It was the first time I’d been comfortable all day. I really shouldn’t make too much fun of Grammy and MJ. Last winter I didn’t notice the baby girl was cold at the park until her hands turned pink.