We rode through the middle of nowhere today. Almost the entire ride after getting out of the city through farmland or vinyards that extended as far as we could see in all directions. It was crazy looking to the sides of the road and seeing vineyards or farmland all the way to the horizon, over rolling hills and valleys, it was an amazing sight, something I have only ever seen flying over in a plane.
The ride was not very tough, stayed pretty flat with only a few big climbs with rewarding downhills to cruise down. Today I rode with Brandon, who I know from regional training weekends, and Sam but about 20 miles in Sam's knee was killing him and he decided to rack himself so it could get better and hopefully be able to ride with us for the long day tomorrow. He wasn't the only guy either we had 3 others, Preston, Dean, and, Dylan who didn't ride at all today all from feeling sick in the morning, Dean and Dylan are still recovering and will hopefully feel well soon, Preston is ready to ride tomorrow.
I feel great after the ride, legs a bit stiff and sore but not feeling very tired. Unfortunately everyone got racked today due to time constraints. We had some delays in the morning so we left a bit late and couldn't finish the full 80 miles. Our rack point was to make 70 miles by 11 but I made it 55 by 11 with Brandon and the next group was just a mile behind us, without the delay we could have really pushed it at the end and had some pace lines finish. We also had a great conversation, today is the one year anniversary of Brandon's grandpa's passing and it got me thinking about my gandma and missing her and remembering how incredible she was, we dedicated our ride to them and it honestly did help us crank out some more miles, we found some energy and picked up the speed to get to 55.
I mentioned one of my goals in my last post about being physically prepared for the ride so that I could focus on friendship visits and not my riding but I forgot the second half of that goal which was that I also wanted to be able to help me teammates on the bike and today made me realize that, when Sam mentioned his knee was hurting I started taking longer pulls (pulling is being the lead man in a pace line, cutting the wind and creating a draft for the people behind you) once Sam racked, Brandon and I were switching off until his legs started getting burnt out so I pulled a long ways in the end cuz we really wanted to finish the ride. I mentioned a goal I had in my last post about being physically ready for this trip so i could put my focus and energy into friendship visits but forgot the other half of that goal which I really saw achieved the last two days. I wanted to be able to help my teammates push themselves on the bike and ride as many miles as possible and be able to encourage them to keep peddling, riding yesterday and today I found I was really able to do that and glad I put all the training miles in.
Our friendship visit was really relaxed it was with Lilly Allen who helps people with disabilities find work, many of them work at their facility. Unfortunately a lot of the people who they help were out of town for a Special Olympics event but we still had a great team hanging out and meeting a lot of the staff who were so thankful for the commitment of our team and mission of Push America.
Tomorrow is 115 and the terrain is to be determined but after everyone getting racked today we are ready to move quick in the morning to get on the road as soon as possible and have plenty of time to make it to our rack point.
No comments:
Post a Comment