Woooo, the body is beat. Headache, stiff neck, lower back pain, stomach empty, legs dead, ankle hurting. My memory is that things get better. Tomorrow Saturday, is another Elete Cyclery: the big store ride. When I first arrived Monday, Edgar really played down the Saturday ride. Did not mention it with the Tuesday Thursday ones and then said Saturday was very long. Yesterday he said 50 miles. My plan is to start it but drop when I want to. 50 miles at Mexican speed is far far beyond my ability, or desire!. The longest I go regularly is tha 60 mile Kemple King fund raiser in Exeter NH in October and this year I was the Red Lantern. No desire to repeat that, motorcycle escort and all!
Kemple King does have killer hills. I get dropped on the Hotel Road hills but they are really nothing. My first days in Lagos Portugal I try to ride up a bad hill and that may be close to 60 miles all day but I do have a “Granny” 34 back gear on that bike.
We will see what Saturday brings. I am lead to believe it does not include the Hotel Road so I am very interested to see the route, though they do start as usual at 5:30, (really 5:50) in order to be beat the traffic.
Anyway, I diverge, back to today’s ride. Normal Hotel Road 6:15 group with the black pickup chase. There were 7 of us including me. The pace was reasonable for a Hotel Road group. I dropped at the same place, about 18-20K out. The worst hill, just a pimple really, is there. I kill myself getting up it with them and lose my desire to keep up on the way down. We also had a couple “stops and starts” that kill me, take the fight out of legs and will power. The “stops and starts” are usually caused by a bus or a red light. I always struggle, seemingly more than the rest of the group, to come back up to full speed after such. Then when we hit the hill, I am ready for the showers. I made it out to the Blue Sphere, and took another selfie.
Still working on that smile goal.
The ride back was the normal scarry. I now try to stop at parked busses. I have not gotten the rear view mirror to work.