Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Friends, Food and more Agony

Well, who says you can never get too much of a good thing? Saturday's ride was a good indicator of fitness both personally and where my teammates are realtive to each other. After spending the day out in the cold, Sunday brought a rest day with the only rise in heart rate coming from trying to install new lighting fixture in our family room.

Thomas had called the night before and mentioned a ride on Monday in Gettysburg with Trey and a few other Tri-geeks preparing for the Columbia triathlon. Sunday night Gina and I went to Thomas' for Thai food, Christine was there as well. I decided to try my hand a Thai cooking so I went with something easy, green curry chicken, yummy, epsecially if you like it hot. I think I used one too many scoops of curry paste for it to be 'mild'. Oh well. We had a good time eating Thai and topping it off with Ben and Jerry's along with an assortment of various toppings, reddi whip rocks.

As my Monday off due to pres' day rolls around, I find myself once again getting up earlier to go ride my bike than I do to go to work, is that wrong?

Met up with the crew at the P&R off of 32, finally met this guy Reese everyone keeps asking me if I know. What just because I ride a bike I'm suppose to know everyone else that rides one? Anyway, the ride sounds like it's going to be a repeat of Saturday, not exactly what I was looking for, bit this will let me guage my recovery, atleast that's my excuse. I figured there was a chance Thomas wouldn't hand for the full 70miles and that we could cut it short. This would be his longest road ride.

As we started out of Thurmont, we immediately headed up, climbing up 77. I knew this wasn't the ride I was looking for. Fortunately as we made our way, the roads where we could have gone up we avoided and the ride was rolling as somewhat effortless. Thomas was a tropper, somewhat oblivious as to whether or not he could sustain for a ride of this duration, yet attacking and riding hard off the front early on in the ride. The ride for the ost part was steady and uneventful, Reese was in aw of the rolling landscape and the smooth roads. The final accent of the day took us up 491 from Smithsburg to Ft. Ritchie. Trey decided this would be a good point to send Thomas back a shorter, yet not that easy way over 77 from Smithsburg straight to Thurmont.

The rest of us set a tempo up 491, Reese and I rode together at a steady pace until Kent followed by Trey passed us about a mile and a half or so from the top. I decided to dig into the reserves to see just what I had and laid chase. I was riding about 20m infront of Reese chasing Trey, as I was cloing the gap on Trey Reese had pulled himself back onto my wheel and we worked to finish bringing Trey in. From there the three of us caught Kent and began our long, cold decent into Thurmont. At about the same time, Trey and I looked at each other and made the comment that our toe warmers had just wore out, almost 5 hrs. Not bad, but not the 6+ hours they advertise. We cruised into Thurmont and Thomas was waiting at the car, a well timed arrival, he had only waited 5 minutes or so, not having a key to the car, he could have been standing out there for a while.

All I know is that I was spent, maybe a bit more than I need to be at this time of the year. I had a really hard time getting out of bed this morning, even more than usual. To top it off, the agony continued as I had to sit in the worst traffic on the way in. 2 hours to get to Herndon, an hour and a half was just getting past 29 on the beltway. Rediculous.

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