Monday, August 30, 2010

80 miles Saturday

So I lead my first official JDRF group ride on Saturday.

It started off a little shaky with me not being able to print out any of the maps or cue sheets due to outdated Microsoft products on my computer and then getting my signals crossed thinking that the ride started at 8am when it actually was scheduled to start at 7:30am. So my planned 20 minute early arrival ended up being 10 minutes late.

But we were able to get underway pretty quickly once I got there and were on the road by 7:45am.

It was a great morning for a ride with the temp hovering around 60 degrees. We had a couple of missed turns to start with, as I had to adjust to the way the cue sheet was laid out by coach Alex. I had brought one with me that gave mileage point to point, but the official sheet was laid out as miles from the start to each turn. The good news is that the route was originally to be 78.5 miles and ended up being 80.5.

Danny, Kate, Kelly, Lisa, Sam and Tony were mostly good natured about the initial missed turns :) and as we headed north, worked well together in efforts to develop some critical skills for our Death Valley ride, including straight line drafting in a pace line, echelon formations for drafting in a cross wind and dual pace line to keep the pace higher in shifting wind conditions.

All in all it was a great training ride with the gang, a few aches and pains (my left foot started that burning thing, but I think a little glide on the affected areas might solve this dilemma) but no belly aches.