Itchy Wheels

For some reason this week I have been very restless about cycling. It started on Monday night, when I felt the need to buy some more cycling gear because Evans had some good deals in their online sales. I have already covered that this seems to be a coping mechanism for me, when what I really want to do is ride!

On Tuesday I remembered that I had decided to gift Alberto with a long weekend of credit card touring for his birthday. His birthday is in February, but I was thinking either Easter weekend or the early May bank holiday weekend. I got excited looking at different routes, first thinking of Western Scotland and then Wales, and after breaking down and mentioning it to Alberto, settling (for now) on Northern France and Belgium -- hopefully heading to Roubaix to see the end of the Paris-Roubaix race on Easter Sunday. Researching this took up most of my evening on Tuesday and Wednesday.

I went to dinner with some friends on Thursday and talked about audaxing and how I plan to attempt at least a 300 this year. They were training for various marathons and half-marathons, and talking to them convinced me that I could run home from work occasionally to get some extra cardio in.

Friday I felt well enough to cycle to work. When I arrived home after my return commute and got off the bike, I actually found myself feeling disappointed that my exercise was over for the day. I decided to capitalize on this and quickly changed into my running gear and headed out. I ran 5.5km, which is on the long side for me, and felt great the entire time. I felt great even as I was heading back home--I could have gone on for longer but I decided not to overdo it as we have our first audax of the year on Sunday.

And now it's Saturday, and while Alberto went to work on his PhD for a few hours, I spent the day looking at the Audax UK calendar choosing a few 200 and 300km events that I'd like to do!

This is a new feeling for me. I love cycling, but it's usually Alberto that gets excited about planning mini-tours, pushes me to sign up to events before they sell out,  and generally goads me into cycling a longer or more hiller route than I am comfortable with. I guess I'm just anxious to get back to where I was last season and to keep improving from there. I keep having to remind myself that it's only January!

Does this happen to anyone else? What do you do about it?