Portales, NM

7.10.2010

Today’s ride was just awesome, plain and simple. It was a day of challenges. It was not necessarily challenges from the terrain, but instead challenges that we set for ourselves. We had to go a total of 95 miles today, from Roswell, NM to Portales, NM. It was flat, and there was pretty minimal wind the whole day, with a slight tailwind later in the afternoon, which made for pretty easy riding. We averaged between 19 and 20 miles per hour the whole day.

The way that we kept ourselves entertained was by setting personal challenges. For instance, I vowed that I would never take my feet off of the pedals for the entire day. This meant that at stop signs and red lights, I would have to balance and remain almost stationary. At crew stops and lunch I would lean on the vans, and if someone got a flat, I would do my best to keep my feet from touching the ground until it was repaired. I had gotten by doing all of these things for about 81 miles, until I got to the rack point and messed everything up. I had passed the van and was circling back around so that I would be able to lean back on it, when I slipped off my right pedal and fell over. That was the end of my challenge, and I was really bummed. I’ll just have to save that test for another day I guess, maybe I’ll try it when we get to Texas on one of the century days.

Some of the other challenges our paceline tried to perform were the no hands mile, the rumble strip mile, and relieving oneself while riding. These kinds of games kept us entertained the whole day. We actually had to stop to repair Mike Hurvey’s bike after he had ridden on the rumble strips for a mile. I think tomorrow he and I are going to try the no sitting down challenge, where we stand up on the bike for the whole day. Fortunately it’s only a 50 mile ride.

It’s great that I’m getting in good enough shape that I can focus on having fun on the bike rather than the difficulty of the endeavor.