Yesterday I rode from the Thriftway parking lot out to the Church Property. The Priests in our ward are training to ride the San Juan Islands for their High Adventure so I went with them. It’s hard to pass up an opportunity to ride. They were going to camp overnight but I opted to not do the camping thing with them and just ride home after we got to the church property. I really hate sleeping in a tent and sleeping bag so this worked out perfect for me.
After everyone gathered at the parking lot we started up the hill on 64th St. this is a tough hill because you start without any type of warm-up. I was breathing pretty hard up the hill but I was the second one up. Once we got to the top we had to wait for what seems like hours for everyone else. Honestly, it’s was probably only 20 minutes.
The rest of the ride to the Church Property is basically down hill so it wasn’t too bad. We had to stop a number of times to wait for the others but all in all it wasn’t too bad getting there. Towards the end I drafted off of Jeff which was fun. He was keeping up a pretty fast pace so I was struggling to hang on. After a while he sped up to over 20 MPH and that was all I could take. He dropped me. Once I dropped off, Barry passed me and continued to draft off of Jeff. They must have been going 22 by that time. Barry was riding a really heavy mountain bike and he was still able to keep up. Pretty impressive – Makes a father proud.
After we arrived at the Church Property a super nice missionary showed me where the hose was. I was able to fill my water bottles and wash my face off. It felt great. I also made a pit stop before I left. When I walked out of the outhouse the missionary took a picture of me standing by the outhouse and a sign of the campsite with my bike. If she sends me the picture I’ll post it here.
After everyone gathered at the parking lot we started up the hill on 64th St. this is a tough hill because you start without any type of warm-up. I was breathing pretty hard up the hill but I was the second one up. Once we got to the top we had to wait for what seems like hours for everyone else. Honestly, it’s was probably only 20 minutes.
The rest of the ride to the Church Property is basically down hill so it wasn’t too bad. We had to stop a number of times to wait for the others but all in all it wasn’t too bad getting there. Towards the end I drafted off of Jeff which was fun. He was keeping up a pretty fast pace so I was struggling to hang on. After a while he sped up to over 20 MPH and that was all I could take. He dropped me. Once I dropped off, Barry passed me and continued to draft off of Jeff. They must have been going 22 by that time. Barry was riding a really heavy mountain bike and he was still able to keep up. Pretty impressive – Makes a father proud.
After we arrived at the Church Property a super nice missionary showed me where the hose was. I was able to fill my water bottles and wash my face off. It felt great. I also made a pit stop before I left. When I walked out of the outhouse the missionary took a picture of me standing by the outhouse and a sign of the campsite with my bike. If she sends me the picture I’ll post it here.
For the ride home I decided to take the long way home. This is a nice ride up Burn road then over to 99th. I started up Burn road and noticed that one of my calves was starting to cramp up. This was weird. I’ve never cramped up on a ride before. I must have been dehydrated. It was a really humid day. In case you’re curious here is a link to the causes of cramps.
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/muscle-cramp/DS00311/DSECTION=causes
The ride was going really well minus the cramps for the first 10 miles on the way back until a dog chased me. Ever since Jenny broke her shoulder last summer after getting chased by a dog I’ve been spooked by the whole dog thing. Well, quite a large dog chased me for a while down the street. I tried to spray him with my water bottle while I was peddling feverishly but this didn’t work. He actually caught up with me and start running beside me. I thought he was going to take a bite out of my leg any second but without thinking I yelled at him at the top of my lungs “Hey get out of here”. Luckily, he stopped in his tracks. It really freaked me out but if you were to watch is from a distance I’m sure it looked pretty funny.
About a half a mile up the road a peacock ran in the road right in front of me. I hit the brakes because he wouldn’t get out of the way. He started running in front of me so I just road slowly. For some reason I just couldn’t get around him so I road until he ran into someone’s yard.
The rest of the ride was pretty uneventful except for getting lost once. I was able to recover without having to back track to far. All in all it was a really fun ride.
Stats:
29 miles
Total ascent 1319 ft
Ride time 2:14
Max speed 33 mph
Avg speed 13.2 mph
Avg cadence 77
1 comment:
Dude you inspire me. You can go on and on about virtually nothing! I was hitting "next blog" and getting things in German, Spanish etc and then low and behold "Mike and his Bike" shows up and is a local boy. HAHAHA.......
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