Last night I was worried about riding over 100 miles in the oppressive heat and humidity... well, I needn't have worried at all. We woke up to a nice steady rain and 74 degrees. The rain kept up for about the first 4 hours of the ride, and then we had intermittent drizzle throughout the rest of the day. Actually it's easier to ride in a cool rain than the heat and humidity we've been dealing with lately! 8 people chose not to ride--some of them rented a car! (wimps).
Got a good start, got wet right away and stayed that way... first sag at 31 miles was at a Community College and we were able to eat our snacks indoors and use real flush toilets! What a luxury! (I'll never take plumbing for granted again!). I was running with the big dogs this morning--started out with Ken and Bill and John, but could not keep up... ended up riding the better part of the day with Laura and Rich and Jim. Jim took a photo of me coming across the bridge over the Illinois River, but he did not give it to me yet. Bridge pictured above, minus me.
About 50 miles into the ride my left leg started hurting (not the injured knee, the other one). This slowed me down a little, so after the second sag (61 miles) I did not try to keep up with the other people, but in light of my decision yesterday to try to ride with people more often, I rode the rest of the day with Mike. He is having some knee problems, and we were fit to ride together. We stopped at a store and had a snack at about 86 miles and then headed for the barn. Funny enough, we came in just ahead of Laura, Rich, Jim and Darryl... they made one more stop than we did! Not too bad a day (except for the knee issue--I'm icing it now and Peggy offered to show me some stretches that may help). I ended up with an average of over 16 MPH in 6 hours and 47 minutes of riding! I think that's my best century ride so far!
Tomorrow I get to ride to Champagne and see Bill (the husband) on my rest day. Yay!
No comments:
Post a Comment