Woman Hollering Creek - 35 Miles

Saturday morning rides are usually my longest for the weekend. This weekend I'm hoping to change that. But, we'll start with a new "longest ever ride" record for me. We picked up Vicky and Erica and carpooled over to Judson High School. From there, we met up with a couple of other riders and a group of seven of us headed out on the route.

I really like this ride, but I really hate the start. It's an almost immediate uphill to get to the traffic light to cross the highway. Once across, it's another steady incline. Once you're about three miles in, the ride becomes much more reasonable, but by then, you're good and warmed up!

Erica hung tight with me and Pete. Tom was long gone ahead of us. Laura seemed to bounce between us and Vicky and Rita. Vicky is a steady 14 mph rider. I'm not there yet, but hopefully can maintain that speed with her soon. For now, I still motor along at my pace until I get there. That's about what the bike will let me do. I managed to attack the big hill after the low water crossing and even though we went straight (instead of turning for the shorter route), thus going further up the hill, I made it at a faster speed than I have in the past. I was cheering as I crested the top, then paused to catch my breath.

This route shares some common roads with our normal Cibolo route. It was interesting to not really know where I was and then suddenly know exactly where I was. Vicky and Rita waited for us at the speedway, and the six of us attacked the overpass and crossed I-10 together. We only went another mile, or so and my chain came off as I was trying to shift to the middle ring. I tried to fix it while on the bike, but discovered that it not only came off, but got lodged in between the gears and the bolt. I couldn't even pedal around. I said "my chain is locked," then slowed down and stopped (pretty much in middle of the incline.) To my surprise, the whole group stopped with me. They could have at least gotten to the top of the hill. We quickly fixed the chain and we were back on our way.

At the next intersection, everyone waited for slow poke me as I'd fallen behind getting up the hills. I took a quick second for a Gatorade break. Meanwhile all of the gals were gabbing away. I was ready to go and felt like I'd been holding up the group, so I said "I'm ready when you are." No one but Pete and Vicky noticed, but they both told me to head out if I was ready. So, off I went. I heard the gabbers suddenly realize we were rolling, fumble to put away water bottles, and get clipped in to roll out.

We arrived at the break point (on this route referred to as "The Pie Place".) I was a little embarrassed that we'd stopped for a break only a mile and a half before reaching the break, but I've never ridden the route before, so I couldn't have known. We parked our bikes, and went in for a break. It was nice to cool off, have a clean restroom, and get a cold drink (and a bit of Pete's pie.) With five women, we stopped for 45 minutes though! I cannot take that long of a break on a ride.

Heading back out I discovered I needed to warm-up all over again. Lesson learned and now Pete will work on training time management on a ride. I slowed down for the second half of the ride. Not only did we have consistent rolling hills, but I was getting tired. We also had a headwind that couldn't decide which direction it wanted to go and it was gusting pretty bad at times. Plus, it was now late enough in the day that the sun was getting hot, and there isn't much shade on this route. We kept moving though and I knew we would get back to the truck... eventually.

As we neared the end of the ride (within half a mile of the high school parking lot), a grey Mustang pulled up along side me. I was confused and looked over. The woman driving the car had rolled down her window and she yelled, "You go girl!" I laughed and said "Thanks!" I was all smiles back to the parking lot. Talk about a great way to end a ride! I made some laps in the parking lot until my distance pedaled read 35 miles. I wasn't stopping at 34.6 when I was that close!


Goals
Today's Miles: 35
Total Miles Achieved: 393.1
Financial Investment: $972.39
Total Weight Loss: -0.0