- Thanks for the great ride -

On Saturday morning I headed out the door with my steel bike and a plan to hit the gravel roads. I took the bike paths over to the east side of town and then headed north where the path splits near our office. Just as I was passing the Boulder Creek junction of the Foothills path, someone pulled onto the path about 30 meters in front of me.

I caught up with the woman at a stoplight, and quickly noticed that she was on one of the smallest frames I had seen - a 47cm Trek with 650 wheels. I said hi and asked about the bike. She liked it a lot - largely because it fit her well, which I am sure isn't easy top find for a woman that small. Swell, that's all that really matters I said, by the way, I'm Lance. Ellen, she said.

So we head out 36 toward Lyons and continue chatting. She was doing base miles and had to keep the watts under 125, so that meant that I shouldn't get dropped while trying to regain a semblance of fitness. As we pass Left Hand Canyon the subject of Interbike came up and we both agreed that we hated doing the show - which of course puzzeled me a bit because I didn't know she was in the industry. Turns out that it was Ellen from Cateye (located about a hundred meters from our office here in Boulder). Hey, I said, I met you at the show a couple years ago, when the Strada computers first came out...

So we chatted away and rolled on for about 3 hours.

She delivered me back to the path that heads up to my neighborhood, and after a groveling 4-mile slog home (slight but constant uphill, and I'm doing my base training glycogen depleted so that my body gets used to tapping the fat stores for energy [a suggestion from Allen]) I sat down for some left over Saag and a tub of vanilla bean yogurt.

On my Sunday ride I mentioned my good fortune on Saturday of finding someone to ride with to my friend Michael Stone. Ellen, she's tiny and really nice, right? Strong rider? It seems everyone knows Ellen and that she has a reputation for being an incredibly nice person, so how can you beat that. Here's to Ellen, and thanks for a great Saturday ride. Look forward to the next...