I thought about doing a club ride this morning, but as chilly as it was early, I just decided to get a late morning start and ride by myself. I took off from home on the Xstream just before noon, and rode to Cleburne. It had warmed up decently, but the wind had picked up quite a bit. I ended up with 53.9 miles.

This ride didn’t seem worthy of a blog entry, but checking the blog, I realized I hadn’t even made an entry in it in over two months. It’s been that kind of winter. I didn’t make a ride of at least 50 miles during that entire two months plus. I wrote about my pneumonia in December. That was followed by some pretty chilly weather. I don’t like riding in really cold weather anyway, and it didn’t especially seem like a good idea just after pneumonia.

Then, as soon as the weather warmed up, I got terrible bronchitis. It took over three weeks to get rid of that. I did some rides, but just short ones, and not on the coldest days. I hadn’t even recovered from that when I ruptured the bicep on my right arm. That was my good arm, since I had surgery on my left shoulder last August.

If all this seems like whining, it really isn’t. One thing a lung cancer diagnosis does is give you a different perspective on things. Pneumonia? That’s a great diagnosis to a lung cancer survivor. As bad as it is, and as dangerous as it can be, it’s a much better diagnosis than lung cancer. Bronchitis? Once again, very good stuff, compared to lung cancer. And shoulder surgery or a torn bicep seem like pretty minor stuff, compared to lung surgery.

But all of this did affect my riding. I needed lots of miles ridden in December to make my 2012 goal of 7,500 miles, and that didn’t happen. I ended up with 7,200 miles for the year. I barely rode over 200 miles in January, my worst mileage month in years. February is better, but still a subpar mileage month for me. With a full time job again, and not commuting to work by bike any more, I’ve adjusted my 2013 mileage goal down to 6,000 miles. Hopefully I can make that.

The long way from Crowley to Cleburne and back.