A Stitch in Time

Woo, so yesterday K. and I decided that it was warm enough and we were recovered enough to try that riding thing again. I actually took Monday off from exercise (which is unheard of for me) because I wasn't feeling too spry. Yesterday my spry was back so we hit the trails after work. We did the "big loop" we often do (cross Boulevard bridge, ride Northside trail, cross scary ped bridge, ride Belle Isle loop, cross smaller ped bridge, ride fire road to Forest Hill, ride Forest Hill loop, limp home.)

This time we skipped the loop on the top of Belle Isle because there were too many people and dogs and strollers everywhere and we decided to give that time to a slow lap in Forest Hill. Now, Forest Hill is a thing. It's a few miles of mostly pain. It will hurt you. You will either be going right straight up, or right straight down, with some curvy stuff in between. The last quarter-ish mile is all flat fast twisty stuff which I LOVE. I could do that all day. I sometimes take the turns too fast and crash, but it's totally worth it.

Anyway, we ride the big loop and somewhere in the middle I start to get a stitch in my side, something that generally only happens to me when I try to do something stupid, like jog. I almost never get a stitch from mountain biking and it was really absurdly painful. We got to Forest Hill and I decided to suck it up and keep riding. The stitch was very much still there and hurt more when I hit a bump, which is pretty much all you do when you're riding on rooty singletrack. I mean, it's made of bumps! ow. ow. OW. Ow. ow. ow. OW. Like that. Then it stopped worrying about the bumps and just hurt more when I breathed, which, um, I couldn't really avoid doing. Dang, that hurt. But I finished the lap! I am no quitter and we got a good hour and a half ride in last night. That was sweet. (I did some Internet research on the stitch and apparently the pain is caused by my liver bouncing off my spastic diaphram. Awesome, if by awesome I mean gross.)

Coolest thing seen last night: There's this narrow little singletrack that runs between a fence and a tree-covered hillside that takes you to the fire road. It's mostly unoccupied because there's a wider river-access trail further down the hill. However, last night there were GOBS of people on this narrow cut-through, most of them wan, be-studded punk rock kids who made me all nostalgic. When we were clear of them I looked over at K. and asked, "Do you think they realize they're, like, outside? During the daytime?"