Being the week between Christmas and New Year's, sometimes people can ride in the middle of the week. Several Irregulars had indicated that they might be interested in a mid-week ride. One rando contacted last week to indicate that he was interested in riding Irregularly (he didn't put it that -- that's the way we "insiders" refer to it --LOL) late this week.
Biker Bob is coming tomorrow to ride the Allensville / Denny's Store 80-miler (there's a link to a map on the "Route Maps" page). Ricochet says he's riding tomorrow, too -- something about needing to learn to ride several days in a row to improve his potential at 1200's. Bob says he is also coming back Saturday. I must remember to ask if the Alamance Bike Club has gone into hibernation or something.
Anyway, back to today's ride. Red-Rocket indicated that he wanted to ride at 0900, but not for more than 3 1/2 hours. That last was probably to keep-me-in-check so I wouldn't try to trick him into a 5 or 6 hour tour or something. Everybody always seems to think that I ride a lot, and always long. I'll acknowledge that until the middle of November, the average length of my rides this year was ~ 85 miles; the average has fallen considerably without the usual three or four or five 200-km rides a month. But I've never been one of those four or five (or more) times a week riders. The most rides I ever did in one year was 126 rides -- that was in 2009 -- the year I chased getting to 10 thousand kilometers of total riding (no RUSA kms). I didn't make it. But then, LT decided that I could not stop short.
Anyway, back to today's ride, again. Ricochet Robert decided he'd ride, also. That made three of us. Lee picked a route: Six Forks, etc. to Pokomoke; then NC-96 --> Brassfield Rd to Creedmoor; then Elm St. --> Northside Rd to Cash Rd to OWT and back to PUE. That would include / did include some stretches on 96 that (I think) I had never ridden before -- turned out it was probably less than two miles of stuff I had never ridden. Ricochet commented, while on 96, "hey, I don't recall ever riding past here before!" Several miles of new road for Robert.
Typing of Robert, during most of today's ride, Ricochet was no where to be seen -- it was mostly "Ragged Robert" today. However, Ragged did find legs once or twice; once just in time to stop for a flo-max break.
Lee was clearly fueled by rocket fuel, today. No - no - not THAT rocket fuel! It is just that compared to Robert and me, Red-Rocket-Lee had good form and speed today. We rewarded him in two ways: (1) we let him lead almost the entire ride -- and almost the entire ride was into the wind -- we got quite lucky in that the wind shifted during the ride -- usually right on cue as we turned to change out "major-axis" direction. (2) late in the ride, with the tailwind finally in evidence, and Ragged and me wanting to save some legs for tomorrow, and Red-Rocket quickly drifting off our front, we cut the bungi-cord and told him to hammer on home ... to nap and prepare for the trip tomorrow to go see the distant grand-babies.
That about sums it up, really. It was a pleasant day to be riding -- around 50 degrees Fahrenheit when we finished. SUNNY the entire ride. Ragged and I were back in PUE before noon (that's according to the clock on my cycle-confuser, which might be two or three minutes slow); R-R-L may have been back home before we got to PUE.
Oh, one more thing. Well, two actually. The title of today's post.
- 9000 -- just after leaving PUE for the core section of the ride, I crossed 9000 miles for the year. Many thanks, previously noted, but it probably never hurts to repeat thanks ... so many thanks to those that rode with me, or volunteered, or RBA'd, or whatever. It was definitely done "with a little help from friends".
- 35000 -- about 1.4 miles after passing the 9000-miles-this-year marker, I passed the 35-thousand-lifetime-miles marker. That's miles that I've documented starting in 2004 -- a fairly short "lifetime", but it is my adult cycling lifetime.
Dec-28:
--> PUE: Pokomoke-Creedmoor-CashRd-OWT --> ; 51.2 m.; est. 3h,20m in-motion; 15.3 mph.
Q-1 tot: _23 rides; 1822.2 m.; 123 h, 05 m; 14.8 mph.
Q-2 tot: _30 rides; 2604.9 m.; 174 h, 22 m; 14.9 mph.
Q-3 tot: _29 rides; 2479.2 m.; 161 h, 05 m; 15.2 mph.
O-N tot: _20 rides; 1591.3 m.; 105 h, 56 m; 15.0 mph.
Dec tot: __9 rides; _548.7 m.; _37 h, 19 m; 14.7 mph.
YTD tot: 111 rides; 9046.3 m.; 603 h, 48 m; 15.0 mph.
No comments:
Post a Comment