Saturday, February 18, 2012

A SUCCESSFUL RIDE! FINALLY!

ALRIGHT!!  We've finally accomplished something!  We just got back from a bike ride in Southern Maryland.  After a brutal 45 miler a few weeks ago, we decided to look up something slightly less hilly.  We found a route where the biggest incline was only 100 feet, and there were really only about 5 major hills.  Also, there were only about 5 turns so it would be hard to get lost.  The only possible obstacle was that it was in Waldorf.  No idea how to get there!  We googled the directions and were excited for another chance at a long bike ride.
Click here to see where we had planned to go

This morning I checked the weather and it was supposed to be 45-50 degrees and sunny with only a little bit of wind (why did I check Washington weather instead of Waldorf weather? not sure)  We have a visitor at our house right now--Cordie the dog--so we wanted to get our ride done as early as possible.  After a challenging morning walk with two dogs, we were on our way.  

We should've figured it out when we couldn't find the side street where we were supposed to park.  We ended up parking at a random street off of Route 5 where we thought Pika street was supposed to be.  We rode for about 20 minutes, and THEN we found Pika street.  Mistake #1!  I stopped Brian and told him that by doing that we were adding 8 miles onto our ride.  Hmm... well, we gotta add miles somehow so it might as well be today!  

So then we rode for another 30 some minutes and when I stopped seeing signs for route 5, and still hadn't seen Olivers Shop Rd, I thought MAYBE it was time to check out where we were.  Turns out at some point we had accidentally turned onto Berry Rd instead of Leonardtown Rd.  Mistake #2  We had gone 6 miles  in the wrong direction!!!  UGH!!  Then it was time to figure out a new route.  We were definitely not prepared to do close to 65 miles so turning around and doing to original route was no longer an option.  We decided to do go back to Leonardtown Rd, see how many miles we had gone so far, and do an out and back on the original route for enough miles to give us a grand total of 50 miles. 
When we got back to Leonardtown Rd, we had gone a little over 17 miles (and 4 of them were on the wrong part of route 5).  So in order to get to our 50 miles we were going to have to go 14 out and 14 back and then do the last 4 to get back to our car.  Mistake #3--bad math!!!  17+14+14+4=49  This is what happens when you try to do math and haven't had had enough water or sugar!

Up until we finally got on the correct path, we were smokin' fast at about 20 mph.  That means that our whole ride would only take about 2.5 hours!  Not too shabby considering all the mix ups!  Of course, as soon as we got onto Leonardtown Rd, our speed dropped to about 17 mph due to wind and hills.  Oh man, I thought it was only supposed to be a little windy, but this felt like I was going to get blown away!  I was holding on to the fact that in a few miles we were going to turn onto Olivers Shop Rd.  I was so excited that we were going to turn that I almost didn't mind that the turn was after a hill.  BUT THE HILL KEPT ON GOING...and going ...and going.  Also the wind picked up and we must have been riding STRAIGHT into it!!  For the last 7 miles until the turn around, we had only gone about 14-15 miles per hour average.  For a while, I just thought I was so pooped that I had run out of energy, but when we FINALLY turned around, we got back to about 20 miles per hour. YAY!  The ride ended up taking us about 30 minutes longer than we had estimated, but we got back fairly close to our original estimated time.  Of course, Cordie and our dog, Franklin, really didn't care that our legs were shot, they were ready to go outside on a walk as soon as we got home.

Besides tired shoulders from being in tri bars too long, and pelvic bones that felt bruised from being in the saddle for too long, the rest of the ride went well.  I was a little bummed when I realized that I had done some bad math, but mostly I was just happy to finish.  Woo hoo!  I'm really hoping that next week is nice... and not rainy... and no one is sick.  I want so badly to get back into a regular workout schedule!     March 11th is the first official day of our ironman training from our book so it would be nice to get in all our workouts from now until then!

At this point I have TOTALLY lost track of mileage.  :(  I wish that I would've done better!  I will restart the count once we get to our official 24 week plan.  Maybe by then, my life will be a little less crazy?!  (HA, that's funny, I don't know how to not be crazy!)  

Right now, Brian, Cordie, Franklin, and I are all lazily sitting on the couch.  I'm glad the dogs are calm--I think I'd just have to let them take over the house otherwise!  

Cordie (who was originally owned by Ben, is now
 adopted by Jonah and Rachel, but we're dogsitting)  is pooped
Franklin is lazily laying around
And Brian is asleep!

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