Tom
06-13-2007, 07:25 AM
I took Monday and Tuesday off and we had some good weather for the last week, so I rode more than is customary for me. I finished up a 360 mile week yesterday with a 115 mile ride from the Dorptown up around Sacandaga Lake and back.
I'm a little tired today. When I put it in perspective, I thought about some of the people around here that commonly do that week's mileage in a day, and the guys that are doing something like yesterday as their short day on the way across the country with no breaks (except that their short day probably has four times the elevation change), and that if I stay in the racing deal and I get into higher categories I'd be racing that distance going the speeds I struggle to keep up with at the short distances.
Dang.
Yesterday was a hell of a day, though. Roads I rarely if ever ride, towns like Broadalbin I have never been through (25 miles up the road, I've lived here 25 years, never went there. Odd, isn't it?), not much traffic by the lake yet, big tailwind on the way home, mammoth thunderstorm tracking a couple miles to my left on the way in, getting turned around a little so my route missed the convenient stores I counted on, wondering how come nobody has a Coke machine out front like the old days... lots of time to clear my head of all the bull**** noise that has been building up in the last couple of months.
The Legend is one hell of a distance bike. I can't say enough about how fantastically that thing works. I went through one bad patch about 75 miles in but then my strength came back and it was the coolest thing in all the world to be in the drops, just easily floating along up rollers, down rollers, along the flats, unconscious and flying. It took just a few minutes over 6 hours of riding to do the whole thing, and I was keeping myself under control because I wasn't keen on getting cramped up or something with a lot of miles left.
I think I have a free day in early July. I have to plot another route.
I'm a little tired today. When I put it in perspective, I thought about some of the people around here that commonly do that week's mileage in a day, and the guys that are doing something like yesterday as their short day on the way across the country with no breaks (except that their short day probably has four times the elevation change), and that if I stay in the racing deal and I get into higher categories I'd be racing that distance going the speeds I struggle to keep up with at the short distances.
Dang.
Yesterday was a hell of a day, though. Roads I rarely if ever ride, towns like Broadalbin I have never been through (25 miles up the road, I've lived here 25 years, never went there. Odd, isn't it?), not much traffic by the lake yet, big tailwind on the way home, mammoth thunderstorm tracking a couple miles to my left on the way in, getting turned around a little so my route missed the convenient stores I counted on, wondering how come nobody has a Coke machine out front like the old days... lots of time to clear my head of all the bull**** noise that has been building up in the last couple of months.
The Legend is one hell of a distance bike. I can't say enough about how fantastically that thing works. I went through one bad patch about 75 miles in but then my strength came back and it was the coolest thing in all the world to be in the drops, just easily floating along up rollers, down rollers, along the flats, unconscious and flying. It took just a few minutes over 6 hours of riding to do the whole thing, and I was keeping myself under control because I wasn't keen on getting cramped up or something with a lot of miles left.
I think I have a free day in early July. I have to plot another route.