Berryville Century
I was getting ready for the ride when my daughter woke up crying. I went in to see what was wrong and told her I was just going for a bike ride. Through the tears she said, "There's nobody to take care of me." She clearly thought ABL was going to work and I was abandoning her. I told her mommy was sleeping and invited her downstairs for some cereal. While we ate breakfast she asked, "Daddy can I come on your bike ride race?"
"Maybe next year sweetie." I tucked her into bed with mommy before I rolled out the door.
The sunrise was amazing, but it was wicked cold out. I had glanced at the weather report recently and for some reason, I thought the temps would be around 25 going up to 45. In actuality, the ride start was 17 degrees. The difference? When the ride start is 25 degrees, it doesn't take long before it rises above freezing, so you don't have to worry about waterbottles and camelbacks freezing. Since I wasn't aware of the true temps, I failed to clear my camelback hose before starting and it promptly froze up. My waterbottles weren't fairing much better as I was soon treated to a Perpetuem flavored Slurpee. Luckily, the area was really flat and we made good time to the first rest stop where I was able to get the camelback hose thawed.
You ever put your pants on in the dark and you realize later you missed a loop with your belt? During last weekend's century, I had two links in my chain freeze up, which made it difficult to pedal. The chain would slip or bounce out of gear. I rode the last 13 miles around 8 mph. So I degreased the chain which didn't help, so I popped out the offending link and then rethreaded the chain onto the bike. Unfortunately, I went on the outside of one of the chain guards on the rear derailleur and it bounced out of gear twice before I realized the problem and fixed it. The chain guard is carbon fiber, so I didn't hear any noise, in fact the newly cleaned and lubed chain was ultra silent.
Lunch was at the Bon Matin Cafe in Berryville. The bank clock across the street said it was 32 degrees out. Bill (those are his pictures in the link above) pulled away from Rudy and I just after Lunch. Rudy and I worked together to try to catch him and Rudy got pretty close, but Bill rode away without us. We later met up at the final rest stop. I got dropped again when I stopped for a bio break, but I caught Rudy about 7 miles from the finish. We averaged around 15 mph with about 4000 feet of elevation gain compared to the 6500 from last week and 13 mph until my flat tire and chain meltdown. My legs have felt surprisingly strong (obviously my speed has suffered), Like I never stopped riding.
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