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I got a copy of the Rouleur 2007 Photo Annual yesterday, a collection of the year’s best photos from six of Rouleur’s regular photographers. A few hundred gorgeous color and black & white shots of races and events from the last year serve to illustrate the blood, dirt, sweat, and perverse appeal of professional cycling. Not to say that this book inspired to me ride more, but it certainly reminded me, as I sat in a big soft chair, how much more I could be riding.

So this morning I woke up early and returned to the rolling routine. Shoes, socks, leg warmers, shorts, pants, t-shirt, jacket, cap, helmet. Tires, brakes, bottle, pump. Keys. I look like a dork when I leave my house for morning rides.

At first my legs felt terrible, but they just needed to warm up. By the time I was in the park they stopped complaining and settled into a comfortable rhythm. I wasn’t really pushing myself, and even felt a bit sluggish when I tried to.

Twenty three minutes had passes when I made it to the halfway point. I had been riding a little faster than I thought, and I wondered if I could make it home in even less time. Pushing a little larger gear I start doing some simple arithmetic in my head. Ten miles in forty five minutes is three and a third miles in fifteen minutes, and that’s thirteen and a third miles per hour average. Ten in forty is fifteen miles per hour. Ten in thirty five is seventeen and something, but I knew there was no way I could push thirty odd miles per hour on my way home to make that average.

I got home, stripped and showered, and forgot to check the clock. Two fried eggs, a bowl of granola, glass of OJ, and a pear were my reward this morning, and I decided that I could safely estimate that the ride lasted forty six minutes, which is better than the hour it used to take me. I had seen two deer, handful of blue birds, and over a dozen quail.

Getting ready to leave for work I swapped the clip-less pedals from my bike for some shoe-friendly platforms with straps, packed my lunch and bike lights into my bag, and turned off all the lights in my apartment before realizing that the fixed cup of my bottom bracket was loose. The whole crank set could knock back and forth about a centimeter or so, and I could hear the poor bearings inside being knocked about helplessly.

For the life of me I couldn’t image what myriad of tangential forces could have conspired to loosen these threads, and gave up the problem as a mystery never to be solved. I pulled the cranks off and tightened down the bearing cup as much as I could by hand and decided I would need to add a 32mm wrench to my home toolbox. The crank went back on the spindle, the chain on the teeth, the grease on my fingers was wiped on my black denim pants, and I was out the door.