Red Poppy Ride

This was a nice day with training buddies Cathy and Malinda, even though some things went wrong.

Well, I guess really only one significant thing went wrong — my bike computer went on the fritz. I have no idea what happened but it worked perfectly well yesterday when I did my ride. However, when I went to put my aerobottle in this morning, it was obvious that my bars had been moved closer together when I had the positioning tweaked on Thursday (yes, Coach, I confess I did not use the aerobottle on my Friday ride). It almost wouldn’t go in, so I sort of worked it in. Yeah, and I also realized that I trimmed the straw BEFORE the new aerobar positioning, which makes the straw a bit short.  #$&^*$($$%^

100K Ride

We took off…I have to confess that the mass bike starts to these rides bother me a lot; I probably feel like people who are afraid of swim starts feel (heart pounding fear).

We took off and of course I made it out of the school parking lot without careening wildly into anyone…or someone careening wildly into me, though the guy on the recumbent bike worried me a bit. Liquid from my aerobottle kept spashing out everywhere (looks like I’m going to need to position that Velcro, because I like using the aerobottle), and some ways on down the road I noticed that my computer wasn’t working (specifically, the RPMs were flashing off and on and varying from 175 to 4 in the space of one or two peddle strokes). We stopped at the second aid station to see if anything needed tweaking but couldn’t find it. $%#&%*%$$^*%(^)

So I just rode how I felt, and I felt pretty darn good.I managed my food and hydration well and remembered to take my electrolytes. And I got to finish with my hubby, who decided at the last minute to come along and do the 100K with us.

4:11 ride time. I hate not having any of the other stats. This was faster than Rosedale and I think it felt very similar terrain-wise. But I liked it better because the countryside was so much prettier (though I totally missed the namesake red poppies!).

Pleasant surprise:  chatting it up with a very friendly cyclist, who had talked to me about my arm warmers and I’d talked to her about her pretty bike…turns out it was someone I’d actually met once, but then she was in spiffy street clothes, so I didn’t recognize her in her “real” clothes.