The Shot Heard Round the World, and Walden.

Been enjoying unseasonably warm and dry weather around New England this week and taking advantage of having my bike back here. I've had some amazing rides...Here's the link to my photo set from the ride....Mon after nationals did a long recovery ride, it was a beautiful day, clear and in the low 50's. I left from my Mom's west of Boston in Hudson headed towards Lexington and Concord. This area is amazing, really it's close to the city, but you would never know it. Old colonial houses, farm fields,




stonewalls everywhere, dry wooded trails, and lots of history. I headed west and eventually ran into Concord and headed up into Minute Man National Historic Park. I rode across the Old North Bridge and rode around the fields surrounding the battlegrounds...I have been here before in the summer and its always crowded with tourists and people dressed up as revolutionary soldiers. The middle of the day on a Monday is quite different and it was quiet and actually more somber. I was the only one there and it was real calm...an amazing place with an amazing history. I rode north around the park and back into Concord to make a loop, then back to my Mom's.

Tues it was a perfectly clear day again, a little colder. I did some intervals around my Mom's place, made a loop with some hills and did repeats. I need to do more of these workouts, I realize I have lots of base fitness, not so much on the speed. I haven't really stopped biking since last spring, but what I lack this time of year is speed workouts and without races to push me I have to force myself to do some tough workouts like this to keep the speed up and build more top end endurance.

Wed was again warm and clear and I headed out a little later in the day towards Walden Pond. When I was in high school I read Walden and it has always been a book I have gone back to again and again...at the time, and still I come back to this quote from Walden, and yes I know it's a bit overused and often in the wrong context, but it's still very powerful to me...

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, to discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and to be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.

I've always enjoyed reading Thoreau, so Walden Pond has always been a place of fascination for me. Because I usually am home only in the summer I haven't had a chance to go to Walden this time of year. In the summer it's insulting, there are people all over the shore, swimming, eating, littering, smoking...just not what I ever imagined. In the afternoon on a clear winter day it was amazing. It was totally calm and everything was reflecting in the pond. It was about 3 o'clock so there was a really beautiful dusk color going on. I sat on the shore for about 30 min before I was getting cold and had to move on. I still had a ways to ride back to my Mom's. I am going to try and ride out again next week and get some photo's...some amazing scenery...