I woke up at 5am to get up and get ready for my 6 hour ride on Saturday and it was storming all night... It was still storming and raining when I got up too. I sat in bed until about 5:30am wondering what I could do, looking at CompuTraining class times and considering driving back to Barrington to ride. I also posted in the IM Facebook forum to see if anyone else was riding and wondering what to do. I was only really nervous because I was riding solo and you do go into the middle of nowhere... my friends were around, but busy, if I had any issues.
Eventually, I decided to drive over to Jenny and Don's in Verona to park my car and see what the weather was like over there. I had planned to park at their place because it's almost along the ride route and they were going to let me shower afterwards before I headed back to Chicago for my cousin's engagement party.
The weather was pretty much the same near them but it was just misting rain and overcast. I wasn't sure if more inclement weather was on the way, but I had decided I would at least try to ride one loop and if it got really bad, I'd just turn around or call friends (knowing I'd have to wait quite a bit). I set off...
My bike only has two water bottle cages right now and so I had 6 bottles prepared, 4 in the car, basically one for each hour. They were filled with 250 calories of nutrition (CarboPro) each and I had a vanilla Honey Stinger for each hour. I hoped this was a good amount of nutrition and that I'd get back to my car within 3-4 hours to change out the water bottles. As it turned out, I just rode from Don and Jenny's to fireman's park and then one loop.
As it turned out, the loop -despite the rain- went much better than the first time in May! Yippee!! I began to think "I can do this!!". I finished in about 3:40 and that was with a stop every hour to eat and stretch and get back at it. I was most afraid of Witte Road since it was so hellish the first time, but this time it felt just fine! I think my bike handling skills are getting better and I knew more how to shift, etc.
What was more difficult or scary for me what North Birch Trail since it was very went and all gravel. This was a slow climb for a couple miles (or at least what seemed to be a couple miles). I need to work on that the next time I'm in Madison (July 4th weekend).
It was too bad that I didn't feel okay continuing the ride to complete my first 6 hour ride but the last hour-ish was very hard downpour and the rain even "hurt". Not to mention, I only saw about 7 other riders the whole morning so I was still a little nervous. I got back to Don and Jenny's, showered up and then headed home. As per usual, the weather was pretty much cleared up by the time I started my drive back to Chicago!
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