Sunday, October 5, 2008

Riding in the Rain!

This past Saturday my team and I were slatted to ride another 50miles...which I thought would be a piece of cake. I quickly learned that I was wrong. We started out the ride with it ever so slightly sprinkling on us...and then the sprinkle turned to a more persistant shower. I have yet to ride in the rain and quickly learned that water resistant gear isn't really that....and the padding in your cycling shorts will absorb the rain water....yep...not so comfortable!



The flat tires were in abundance and everyones spirits were luckily going strong! We all were keeping a very steady pace. I knew that we, somewhere ahead of us, had a big hill to deal with...but who cares this early in the game...we were pace lining and have a great time with it! As the hill continued I quickly found myself hoping that the rain would start up again...I was getting warm and felt that the rain would cool me off. It did...it got to the point that I was so cooled down that I was having problems staying warm.

I finished the ride that day...but dropped off the pace group b/c my knees where hurting and I was so cold that I just felt like I couldn't warm up!

The conclusion that I have come too....rainy days are fun for when you can stay indoors, under a blanket , with some hot chocolate and watching movies. Rainy days aren't fun for days where you are wearing cycling shorts and having the padding in the crotch of your shorts soak up the rain water that is being kicked back on you from your rear tire. :)



After we got to the top of one of the hills there was a sag stop....meaning that they had food and water for us. The folks that run the sag stops are wonderful...they have wonderful options for us to eat to refuel our bodies.



My pace group started to roll out after about 10 minutes at the stop and that is when I heard that the big uphill and downhill were ahead. Since my GPS wasn't working that day and I hadn't been told how far in the distance the hill was and which was first the up or the down hill I was sort of ridng blind.

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