Day 67-Roanoke to Lynchburg VA

Super fun day today on and off the bike. Started with a 6am wake up in our motel and on the road by 7. I had to leave my original pace line because we needed to make a couple 2 man pace lines so I ended up with Jeff which was fine because we haven't ridden together in a while and I want to get a ride in with everyone I haven't been with much before the end of the trip. We took off as the last pace line before sweeps but started hauling from the start. We ended up passing up everyone one by one and really pushing to go fast. Jeff is a good cyclists when he is working hard so I was pushing him to put full effort in by pulling at fast speeds when I could. We were both pushing ourselves to the limits untill around 35 miles where we got red flagged and we realized we had made a pretty big gap between us and the next pace line. Once we left from there we were still moving as fast as we could, at 55 miles we realized our average was almost 18 mph and we wanted to push it even higher so we ended up sprinting the last 13 miles which we thought was going to be 10. We were flying up hills at 26 mph and up, it was insane, we were really going all out just for fun. By the time we got to the lights that slowed us down right before lodging we had brought our average up to 18.7 mph which is very impressive. I had a good time going that fast with him, he is awesome to ride with.

We did an arrival for our sponsor for lodging at Lynchburg College who is a Pi Kapp from Roanoke Xi Chapter. We ate with them and then showered and went down the street to our friendship visit with Challenged Sports where we played beach ball volleyball and mega basketball with an inflatable hoop and ball. I played volleyball for a while with Adrian who was in a wheelchair but if we served it to him in the right spot he could get a hand on the ball and hammer it. The smile and laugh he had every time he hit it was amazing. I also played basketball with Keton who was a little boy and we were picking him up and flying him around the court to slam dunk it in and he was hilarious and full of energy.

For dinner our friendship visit was with the Arc of Virginia. They had pasta for us and we ate dinner with a bunch of their clients. I ended up sitting with Kieth and Sarah who have been married for 20 years and met at a group home they were living at back then. They were such a cute couple, poking fun at each other and laughing. Kieth used to be a Special Olympics weight lifter and beat a few of our guys in an arm wrestling match. After dinner we pushed the tables aside for a dance party and Kieth pulled out some awesome moves for us.

Tomorrow we have 75 miles to do and supposedly a tough one with a lot more hills than we had today. Tomorrow we will also have out last friendship visit which we all plan on making really count. We only 4 more rides left, it is insane. Tonight we started preparing for arrival by clearing out vans.