The weather this weekend was rather beautiful, so I spent a good bit of time on two wheels, and even hit a couple of personal milestones. It’s one area where I can feel like I’m not failing at life; cycling is giving me a consistent string of “wins” that I’m sorely in need of.

Even if I am taking more of those little brown pills lately.

After a stretch of not particularly great weather this week, I got out for my first ride of the weekend on Friday afternoon after wrapping up work. The plan was to ease back into things; fifteen miles or so on my favored portion of the VCT. I didn’t quite get that far due to one more instance of the universe indicating to me that the whitetail deer population of Virginia is out to get me*. As I’m cruising along between fallow cornfields and greenery in one of the sections that’s not directly parallel to Route 5, a deer jumps out of the bushes less than ten feet in front of me, forcing a quick reaction on the (thankfully just adjusted) brakes so as not to hit the reckless cervid, leading to some interesting spinal geometry on my part to keep from taking a spill. I did not fall, nor did I hit the deer, but was nursing a pretty sore back afterward. At that point, I slowly pedaled back to the trailhead, putting about 11 total miles behind me.

I rested up a bit with some proper analgesics, and felt better to the point that after running some errands Saturday morning, I felt good enough to give it another go in the afternoon, putting 21 miles down on a different section of the trail that I haven’t ridden much, or at all, this year, figuring I’d want to get some recce time on it before covering the whole distance in a couple of weeks. In spite of the rolling hills (and a couple of big ones), I made a good pace (almost 15mph), and felt remarkably not sore afterward.

Full of myself, I hit the trail again Sunday morning aiming to increase the distance traveled; from Four Mile Creek trailhead out to Charles City Courthouse, where I turned around on my forty-miler last weekend coming from the other direction, so I could claim to have covered the whole distance of the trail this year before the big one, and so I did. Another 42 miles (and a few hundred yards) in the can, again at nearly 15mph, a beautiful couple of hours in the sun, and no near collisions with deer.

So yes, a couple of milestones: Covering the whole trail in sections this year, my first encounter with large wildlife on the trail, just edging out last weekend for my longest single ride by a quarter mile or so, and, upon looking at my dashboard on the drive home from the trailhead, realizing that I’d put more miles on my bicycle this weekend than I did on my car.

I indeed felt good about my progress this weekend, even if it did involve a few more morning painkillers than I’d necessarily prefer, but it’s better the alternatives.

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* –Over the last few years, this weekend was far from the first time I’ve had a close encounter with a whitetail; apart from a few other instances of “near misses” as described above, I’ve had a small deer bounce off my hip while riding on a dirt trail, and had a deer hip-check my car on the highway, even after I slowed and nearly stopped to avoid the thing, leading to a small but interesting battle scar on the driver’s-side rear door.