Was at work at 8:45. There until 2 o’clock. Home from 2-5. There from 5-midnight. 12 hours of work=dead tired.
Monthly Archive for August, 2005
As promised, here is the rundown on the ride today. We got to Murfreesboro around 6:30 and got registered. I happened to see Michael and his mom who happened to be riding today also. We got ready for the start at 7 and as I was double checking the air in my back tire, I somehow manage to break the stem on my tube. A quick tire change later, and we set out. We stayed in a group for the most part until a few miles before the first rest stop at the 15 mile mark. About a quarter of a mile before the stop, there was a pretty big descent with a hard right hand turn, and the roads were wet. Can you see where this is going? I am coming down in a pretty high gear to get some speed, and as I cut wide on the corner, my back wheel slides about a foot to the left. I was able to recover without falling, but during that incident, I thought that I was going to go down hard. At the speed and angle that I was going, I would have had a very good chance of breaking my right leg. Needless to say, that woke me up.
The rest of the ride was pretty uneventful. The weather was overcast in the morning, some sun towards the middle of the ride and then overcast again towards the end. In other words, it was perfect. I finished in a couple of minutes over 4 hours. Last year I finished in exactly 4 hours and I did 2 more miles. I think that the big factor in this was that I would not allow myself to use my low front gear. On the big rollers, I would just suck it up and work that middle chainring until I had crested the hill. I didn’t realize how much of a difference that would make. There was one memorable hill in that there was a great descent where I was going about 36mph and there was a big uphill right after it. I was riding solo at this particular point, or the people around me would have been freaked out. I just kind of did a karate like grunting noise/yell and powered up the hill in my top gear. It was oddly liberating.
I do know that I am in better condition than last year in that at this point in time last year, I was unable to move in my bed. As of right now, I am not sore. I am tired due to the fact that I have been up since 5 this morning, but not physically tired. Some of this is due to eating and drinking better before, during and after the ride, but some of it is due to conditioning. I do need to go to sleep as tomorrow will be a long day.
Here are some random stats about today.
Average speed 15.1 Mph
Max speed 40.3 Mph
Ride time 4 hours 9 minutes 30 seconds
Distance 63 miles
Well I need to keep this short because I should have been asleep an hour or two ago. Tomorrow at 7am is the start of the Heart of Tennessee 100 or HOT 100 for short. Myself, Chris, Juan and Tim are going to do the metric century which equals roughly 62 miles. I had planned at one point to do the full 100 miles, but I don’t think that I am quite ready for it. I don’t want to do like I did last year and take so long to recover from the ride that I didn’t get on the bike for over a month and a half afterwards. I have everything laid out where all I have to do at the ass crack of dawn in the morning is put on my clothes, raid the fridge to carb up, and then hop in the car. Chris is driving since his rack will hold 4 bikes. We are picking up Juan at 5:45 and then driving to Murfreesboro for the 7am start. Stay tuned tomorrow evening for the after the ride report. I am going to try to take some pictures during the ride from the camera phone and might even upload to my moblog at http://dwrd.textamerica.com from the road. Time to hit the pillow.
Cheers
Last night I went and saw Redeye with , her new roommate and . I thought that the movie was pretty good, but very predictable. It has a rather slow beginning and middle for my tastes, but and seemed to like it more than me. It is not one that I would go and see in a theater again, but I didn’t think that it was a waste of money.
I woke up this morning, bummed about not being able to ride yesterday due to the weather. I put on the kit, got the bike, 4 water bottles, one Clif Bar, and a bottle of Gatorade and headed to Shelby. I didn’t have a plan of how far I was going to ride, but I was thinking 2 loops which is right under 17 miles. Well as I was riding, I just decided to keep going. I then made my mind up about doing 30 miles, and left it at that. After 12ish miles, I went back to the car for another water bottle, and a couple of minutes of air conditioning and then went back to do the rest of my 30 miles. By the end I was beat, but I made myself do it. I did happen to notice that I was starting to get dehydrated as I rode. I also noticed that I didn’t eat enough before hand as I was not able to keep a speed over 15mph for the last 8 or 9 miles. When I got in my car to leave and saw that the thermometer was at 93, I realized that was a pretty good explanation of the lack of speed too. Heat index was running at 98 for most of the ride. I might go out again tonight once it cools down, but I am definitely going to go do 10 or so miles in the morning. As for now, it is nap time.
