Smoked!

 Beth and I are ramping up our training for the Amsterdam Marathon in October. The last time that I ran this marathon, I had only trained at the bare minimum levels, which got me over the finish line in decent time but left my body in a sorry state for the next week and a half. I couldn’t even come down a flight of stairs without wincing in pain. 

So this time around, I’m going to be much better prepared. In addition to already running between 25-30 miles per week-- well ahead of schedule for the October race, I’m also incorporating a day of cross-training with the bicycle into the weekly routine. Last weekend I managed to get Beth out on one of these workout rides with me. Normally she’s more of a “watch-the-scenery-go-by” cruiser on the bike, which is fine with me, but this time she agreed to break a sweat. 

So we took off out of town on one of my favorite loops – into the dunes behind Santpoort, across Landgoed Beekesteijn, through the tunnel at Velsen, then a nice wide arc around Spaarnwoude and back into Haarlem through the village of Spaarndam. It’s a modest 40K, so I set a pace that would get a little burn into the muscles and sweat onto the brow, but not push her so hard that she wouldn’t enjoy it. She held up like a trooper and was all smiles at her accomplishment as we were coming back across the last dyke and pedaling hard against an angry headwind. We had the landmark radio tower of Haarlem directly in our sites and were talking about how good that first cold beer would taste. 

And that’s when we heard the familiar “Ring, Ring” of bikes coming up on us from behind, wanting to pass. I pulled in front of Beth to give them room, expecting the usual suspects -- Lycra clad athletes on carbon-fiber racing bikes, tucked into a tight, drafting formation.

But instead, two late middle-aged riders, on grocery-getter granny bikes (complete with saddle bags and baskets), blew by us like we were standing still – pedaling effortlessly with their faces held high and their hair flowing majestically against the ferocious head wind. 

The look on Beth’s face was priceless.

So priceless in fact, that I still haven’t told her about the extra-fat hub I noticed on their back wheels, the telltale sign of an electric-assist bike. She still thinks that we got smoked by a granny-fiets-- a fact that I insisted would NEVER have happened if I were out biking on my own. Fortunately, she won’t be reading this blog entry until I’m safely cruising at 30,000 feet above the Atlantic.