When the moon is in the Seventh House

And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars

From Age of Aquarius by the 5th Dimension

These lyrics kept running through my head during my ride on Saturday morning. It was one of those seemingly all too rare times when everything aligned just right to provide a perfect ride for how I was feeling at the time.

The week after Lumberjack I had only ridden lightly or not at all due to fatigue, heat and/or thunderstorms. Saturday morning was cool and clear and I decided to take out the singlespeed bike after changing the gearing to provide a better ratio for training.

The beauty of a singespeed is also it's detraction. If you want to go faster you pedal faster; if you come to a hill you pedal harder. Sometimes you can't pedal fast enough when going downhill and are limited to how fast your can pedal on the flats for a comfortable distance. On some ride a singlespeed is easier because you don't always have a harder gear so are forced to relax and just let it flow.

I headed out to the local trails and then the back roads and rail trails while soaking up the cool air and scenery. My legs were working in tandem with my heart rate and both were operating better than I thought they would. I headed over to watch part of the Stony Creek marathon mountain bike race.

Riders were coming through from their first laps and many of the bikes had a fair amount of mud attached to them. Some riders were also muddy from where they had apparently fallen somewhere out on the course. The promoter had elected to use a section of trail that had been wet for some time and was known to be muddy. Last year this same race cut out most of the section in somewhat similar conditions. I'm not sure why the whole section was used this time but I imagine their will be some work required to fix the damage created by the racers.

Usually when I watch a race I feel some regret at not being a participant but this time I had no regrets about not entering. I watched most of my Cannondale Midwest team members come through and then rode on toward home.

Today I was back out for a couple of hours but a little later in the day and the Zen like feeling was gone. Partially due to the warmer weather and also I was feeling a little fatigue from yesterday. But overall it was another good ride with an eye toward Tuesday's race at Lake Orion High School, weather permitting. Then the Boyne marathon in two weeks if possible.

The racing season is flying by and the new bikes will soon be announced. I have been receiving some inside scoops from our Cannondale rep attending the dealer show in UT but until things are officially announced we will just have to wait and see what is in store for 2010.