Last minute decision to do this ride…I’m typically not a “last minute” type of person, but a few other things fell through and even the original ride we were going to do today was changed after 7pm last night to be the MELON METRIC!
Close to home, weather predicted to be pretty good and a strong group of riders indicated today was going to be a good ride. We arrived, signed up and were ready to go BEFORE the scheduled time. The roads out here, we decided were excellent! Nice and smooth, pot-hole free. Nothing like the Spirit of Racine race that several of us did just the week before.
It was a little chilly starting out, I think the temperature was about 62 degrees. But it was supposed to warm up to 80 and I really didn’t want to carry arm warmers around the whole day. Everything going well, get in and out of the first rest stop pretty quickly…on the way to the second stop (which felt like forever), we were witness to a dog running a biker off the road. We pulled up, watched as the irresponsible dog owner tended to her dog, not even caring about the cyclist, called 911 and told the guy to just sit. He seemed OK, helmet was cracked, but no road rash. Thankfully, he had ridden off the road in the ditch when the dog ran up on him. He knew his name, but not much else. The dog’s owner came over to ask, “Did he bike you?” but she didn’t seem to care about the fact that this guy had fallen off his bike and hit his head. It was weird. The ambulance got there and we headed back on our way, shaking our heads. Had that dog come up on us, it’s likely several of us would’ve gone down.
We get to the next stop, quickly do what we need to do, and we’re back on the road. Our pace is strong, but not overreaching for any of us. Then we realize something is wrong as we pull back into the first rest stop. Apparently, we followed the wrong arrows out of that second stop…how the heck were we supposed to know that?? They were just color-coded, but I guess there is one way to go for the century and another way for the 65 mile route…SHOOT! We decide to go back to the same place we just left in order to get the 100+ miles we were after.
A train of about 7-8 guys on road bikes pass us, I think we were slowing for railroad tracks or something. I notice a “fist bump” at the front of the line and now I’m irritated with this group. We continued to ride our pace and these guys were getting no further. It was like they just kicked up their pace to pass us, but then hung out. We didn’t draft, but slowly passed them back. Once we passed, our pace picked up noticably. It was kinda like we had to put some ground between us and them to make sure they stayed back there this time. It worked. And it was a solid stretch of ride for our crew! We pass by the house with the attack dog and lo and behold, the dog is in the house…homeowner out front doing yardwork, eyeing up all the cyclists passing by.
At this rest stop, we feel like we’re in the Twilight Zone – coming or going, we don’t know what we’re doing and everything feels like deja vu. As we’re reloading our water bottles, I see some woman looking at JS’s bike and commenting on how nice it is that his aerobottle is up front on his handle bars, making it easy for him to drink. She then says, and this is the quote of the day, “He even has a little sponge to wipe of his face!” She was referring to the yellow netting in the aerobottle that keeps the water from splashing out when you go over some rough road. I almost spit out my Gatorade at that comment. I had to walk away fast.
Now we were on the way home. We knew we’d be over 100 miles, but weren’t sure by how much. We tried to lay off a little on this last stretch, but we really didn’t slow down much. The roads on this last section were the worst of the day! I opted out of the group’s transition run after the ride…I mean, my race is not for 4 more months! WHY ON EARTH am I out here doing 100 miles??!? Sheesh.
Great day. Wonder why I’ve never done this ride before.
