Well, I figure since I can walk today without a noticeable hitch after our mini-tour this past weekend, that I've pretty well recovered. Some of the lessons learned included trying to figure out when my legs are going to get tired.(Not easy to do...) There seems to be a 3 part process for me when I ride and the messages that get sent to my brain:
1. Hop on the bike and start going (read "What are you DOING? And whyyyyy?") which then transitions to 2. going along for awhile with no real issues or concerns that can't be managed with the occasional stand-up in the seat or reshifting (read "All right, this is not so bad...this time...") which follows with some magical switch of the timeclock to 3. becoming *one-with-the-seat* (read "What are You DOING? And I'm not going to cooperate any more...hmph") at which point I sort of just sink down into the seat and am not able to even stand to shift things around to try and get more comfortable. I'm thinking my legs reach the point of no return and just don't want to go any more, much less allow me to stand - so I need to figure out how to pre-empt this maneuver on the part of my body/brain connection - so any thoughts would be great. I'm trying to get stronger, and indeed, for someone who has not been on a bike in 25 years prior to April, I'm doing all right. But, and here's the kicker, I'd like to be stronger without really working at it. I agreed to the tandem biking as long as we were toodling along and I was not going to have to be one of those people who did this for a workout or some such. I'm not an athlete, have no athletic mentality, no real desire for that whole "desire for self improvement" stuff - it's a foreign language to me. But I'm happy as a clam on the back of the tandem. So go figure.