Riding in this morning was pretty typical. I left on time at 6:30a and rode a nice and steady pace all the way out to Dulles. The only thing of note was passing a deer which didn't want to move. It just stood there right on the side of the road and didn't care how close I got. It was really odd. Having something like that happen at night would be much more worrisome.

Tonight was just a frustrating ride. I left work late, which didn't put me in a great mood to begin with. Then I started noticing a small noise that sounded like something just barely tapping one of my spokes. I stopped probably four times, including once under the lighted bridge in Reston, trying to figure out what the problem was. I can't reproduce the noise unless I'm seated on the bike riding, which is odd. My cassette already has an annoying tick to it and I'm not sure if this is connected with that. But I couldn't for the life of me figure out what was going on. Mostly it was frustrating and it doesn't affect the ride.

But I was also starving after five miles or so. That made me get sick of being out on the trail real quick. My lunch hadn't been very big and was famished. This made me keep the pace fairly slow. I need time to recover, so it's a good thing I wasn't hammering, but at the same time, I wanted to be home and off the bike, so it was frustrating. No one was riding in my direction today.

The good news is that the weather has been great. I was able to ride in short sleeves both to and from work today without even a chill. My Sidi's continue to please as well. They're so much stiffer and my feet feel far better connected with the pedals.

I finally got my USA Cycling license in the mail. That means no more carrying around the stupid yellow receipt to races. It was beginning to fall apart, so this came just in time.