What Was I thinking?

This morning I drove over to the Eastern Shore of Virginia to ride in a Multiple Sclerosis Bike Ride. They have 30, 60, 150 and 200 mile rides. (One day rides were 30 and 60 miles. Two day rides were 75 and 100 miles each day.) I chose the one day 60 mile ride. I hadn't trained one minute. In fact, I had to put air in the tires on my road bike because it had been three years since I had ridden it.

I blew out of the starting place at an incredible pace. For the first two hours I passed everyone I saw. I kept telling my self, "This isn't so hard." Sometime during the third hour rigor mortis set in. My legs stated to cramp and everyone whom I had passed earlier passed me. The next two hours were horrible. My legs cramped, I became extremely thirsty (even though I was constantly drinking liquids) and hands became numb. I wondered if I would finish the ride.

What was I thinking when I signed up for this ride without any training? What was I thinking when I rode so hard at the beginning and had nothing left to finish the ride? What was I thinking when I failed to remember that I will be 56 years old within a month?

Wisdom says that you discern something before making a decision. You see I acted foolishly. I deceived myself. I thought that my riding to and from church every day constituted conditioning. Ten to eleven miles a day will not prepare anyone for riding sixty miles. I deceived myself into thinking that I could do what I did when I was thirty. I deceived myself into believing that I would have plenty of energy left over at the end of the ride. I was wrong. I acted foolishly. Isn't that the way we so often make foolish decisions? We deceive ourselves.

Its a little after 4:00 PM now in Virginia Beach. I think I'll go to bed now. This may be the best decision I made all day!


Proverbs 14:8 (ESV)
8 The wisdom of the prudent is to discern his way, but the folly of fools is deceiving.