Painful Road Ride...

Laurent having entirely too much fun!


I woke up this morning about 4 AM to the new puppy whining, so I get up to let her out. I go to get some water and come back to the back deck to see her running frantically around the yard, chasing absolutely nothing and realize, well...this is probably the end of my sleep for the night if she is that hyper. In vain, I tried to take her back to bed, but to no avail, so I went ahead and stayed up.

I took the chance to get things set up for today's ride, get a good breakfast (oatmeal, raisins, brown sugar, berries and some good coffee), and play with the pup. I got suited up and headed on down to the shop.

Curtis showed up, and unfortunately had forgotten his clothes. I'm sure that he would have absolutely loved this ride too, it was right up his alley! The route was picked and we took off. We would be making our way to East Bend, which generally means a relatively hilly ride. Once we got to East Bend the group split into two. Slowly the faster group got split up further until we were pretty well strung out.

We came up Baltimore Road, across to Dinkins Bottom and then up Shallowford and Turbo Hill. Once we got to Turbo Hill the group split up even further. E-Rich, Scott, Cliff and myself all took off off the front. We were able to hold off the main pack all the way back to the shop. I'm sure that there were a few parts though that they could see us off in the distance just enough to be the carrot on the stick.

This ride had me hurting at the end, I was right at the threshold of cramping for a good portion, especially on the last few little climbs up Country Club. E-Rich, Scott and Cliff were all putting in strong efforts, we were able to manage over 20mph with stops included.

Highlight of the ride: Seeing a dog walk across the road with an entire cornstalk in his mouth, then proceed to pull the corn off the stalk and eat it off of the cob....priceless!

Erich and I pulling before the ride really started to ramp up...notice we have enough breath to actually make faces. Later in the ride our faces probably looked similar to that, only involuntarily...

Tomorrow, a welcome back from the honeymoon ride with Mitch and the crew! Woohoo!