Now I can start earning penalties.

I took out the new Garmin 305 and tested it today. It's got so may functions that it will take a while to learn them all, but I figured I'd do a basic heartrate/speed thing.

I also learned how to draft. Sort of. Damn, it was windy today. I'm guessing around 30 mph and gusty. Of course, it seems kind of useless for me to talk about wind, after what Sweet Baboo, et al., went through last weekend at Ironman Arizona, but, it was one of those moments when you're out riding, and it's silent except for the sound of your breathing.

You know that feeling? You're tooling around at about 18 mph hour, effortlessly.
And you're thinking, "Man, that training is really paying off!"
And you're thinkng, "I am AWESOME!"

And then you notice that the trees, grass, and bushes are all whipping wildly. And bending in the direction that you're going.

And then you notice that the people who are headed back in the direction you're coming from are on their bikes all tucked down as low as they can go, grimacing and squinting and barely able to wave without losing control of their bikes.

Crap.

So, you move along, thinking in your foolishly optimistic way, maybe if stay in this direction long enough, the wind will reverse, and be at my back on the way home.

"Or Maybe," laughs the evil bike genie, "It won't!
Maybe it will continue in the same direction, and intensify."

So then you think, maybe this would be a good time to learn how to draft.

Which is what I did. For the first time, I drafted off someone. Sweet Baboo, to be exactly. Of course I'm not good at it, yet, and the wind never blows steadly in New Mexico, so that occasionally an errant blast of wind would knock me just far out of alignment from his back wheel so that the next gust straight at me would leave me breathless and nearly knock me backwards, and I would fall behind.

Sweet Baboo would pedal on for a while, oblivous, and then look back and see how far behind I was. Then he slow down so I could catch up, and remind me kindly and patiently that I really needed to stay on his wheel.

He reminded me kindly and patiently about four times.

Finally I'd had enough of the wind and kindness and patiences and screamed, "I KNOW THAT! I'M TRYING, DAMMIT!!"

Then I felt bad because he seemed genuinely perplexed that I was so frustrated by his obvious attempts to help me. I do think it helped me a lot to have him in front of me, it's just that I get so nervous following closely ever since our accident last year.

Obviously, I made it back. My Garmin, for some reason, stopped reading my heart rate. I'll take it on the run tomorrow and see if it does better. However, I was genuinely impressed with I popped it into its little cradle attached to my computer and, with a tiny beep, it both loaded the Garmin software and uploaded the information from the watch, having tracked my progress. It showed me a little map of my journey and gave me my average speed and a bunch of other stuff. And I'd done was push START/STOP twice.

Tomorrow I'll take it on my long run and play with it some more.

...