Day 45 – A good kind of crazy.
The cue sheet calls today Final Exam Day. I’m pretty sure that a whole third of the day was in my lowest gear, a third of the day was in my highest gear, and only about a third was somewhere in between. Up and down, up and down, up and down. My granny gears were getting tired they weren’t used to working so hard! But it was a good day. And BEAUTIFUL. Naturally, beautiful.
Right from the beginning our hills began, and my muscles were definitely beat up from yesterday. Ane got two flats by the first ten miles, and both made explosive booms like firecrackers. They were very impressive. After some very healthy climbs, we arrived at our first waterstop identified on the cue sheet as at the MacDonalds. As it turned out, there was no waterstop there but we made it one with breakfast and coffee. From there we had some more hills, hills, and hills. They began as rolling hills through farmlands on country roads, passing barns and horses and small towns. It was hot from the beginning today, and we stopped at a gas station before the second stop to refill our waterbottles and admire the hunting supplies in the air conditioning.
Eventually we hit a state park which was a nice change of scenery to winding forest roads, still up and down hills of course. The forest reminded me of roads up in northern Minnesota except that we were surrounded by deciduous trees instead of the nothern pines. The floor of the forest was so green at some points that it looked like a fuzzy green sweater, whereas the northwoods have needles for groundcover. Not a mile too soon we found Pollie and Mark’s waterstop located at the park swimming beach. We sat there for a long time eating and relaxing. Yesterday was definitely the kind of day where we had little appetite, but we were hungry and our bodies were telling us that we needed to eat and eat and eat. Ane declared that it would be at least another year before she can eat another energy bar. Lately we’ve been really taking our time at waterstops, to the point that Pollie asked us how long our social hour would be today.
The next twenty-five miles were brutally hot and humid. We made our way out of the park and onto more country roads. Even Ane, who is rarely affected by the heat, was getting just drained. By the time we made it to Kathy’s stop we were just about dying. Some M&M’s, kiwi strawberry slush puppies, and more energy bars really helped to get some energy into us. We were so far into the mileage, but we knew that we had a monster hill in front of us before we could descend into Gettysburg. Riding in anticipation, we ascended gradually and mentally prepared for a huge hill in front of us, until before we knew it we were descending. It was a little anticlimactic that the hill turned out to be nothing compared to the morning’s climbs, but we were certainly welcome to the long descent.
We rode our way through the old brick buildings of the town and arrived to a warm welcome at the Gettysburg Middle School from Bob Jone’s workplace. The ladies from his firm brought us all yummy, yummy baked goods and coolers of cold drinks, it was so sweet. We went out to a late dinner at a local pub, which had delicious food. Ane was suffering from some heat exhaustion, and we retreated to camp for some R&R. What a hard, long, fun, satisfying day. It seems so absurd to put those four words together to describe the same thing, but they all fit. It’s so crazy here what we’re doing, what we’re almost finished accomplishing. Ben and I were talking about how it’s crazy to love this so much, to love the burn climbing long hills or the challenge of 100+ miles in one day. But it’s a good kind of crazy.
Right from the beginning our hills began, and my muscles were definitely beat up from yesterday. Ane got two flats by the first ten miles, and both made explosive booms like firecrackers. They were very impressive. After some very healthy climbs, we arrived at our first waterstop identified on the cue sheet as at the MacDonalds. As it turned out, there was no waterstop there but we made it one with breakfast and coffee. From there we had some more hills, hills, and hills. They began as rolling hills through farmlands on country roads, passing barns and horses and small towns. It was hot from the beginning today, and we stopped at a gas station before the second stop to refill our waterbottles and admire the hunting supplies in the air conditioning.
Eventually we hit a state park which was a nice change of scenery to winding forest roads, still up and down hills of course. The forest reminded me of roads up in northern Minnesota except that we were surrounded by deciduous trees instead of the nothern pines. The floor of the forest was so green at some points that it looked like a fuzzy green sweater, whereas the northwoods have needles for groundcover. Not a mile too soon we found Pollie and Mark’s waterstop located at the park swimming beach. We sat there for a long time eating and relaxing. Yesterday was definitely the kind of day where we had little appetite, but we were hungry and our bodies were telling us that we needed to eat and eat and eat. Ane declared that it would be at least another year before she can eat another energy bar. Lately we’ve been really taking our time at waterstops, to the point that Pollie asked us how long our social hour would be today.
The next twenty-five miles were brutally hot and humid. We made our way out of the park and onto more country roads. Even Ane, who is rarely affected by the heat, was getting just drained. By the time we made it to Kathy’s stop we were just about dying. Some M&M’s, kiwi strawberry slush puppies, and more energy bars really helped to get some energy into us. We were so far into the mileage, but we knew that we had a monster hill in front of us before we could descend into Gettysburg. Riding in anticipation, we ascended gradually and mentally prepared for a huge hill in front of us, until before we knew it we were descending. It was a little anticlimactic that the hill turned out to be nothing compared to the morning’s climbs, but we were certainly welcome to the long descent.
We rode our way through the old brick buildings of the town and arrived to a warm welcome at the Gettysburg Middle School from Bob Jone’s workplace. The ladies from his firm brought us all yummy, yummy baked goods and coolers of cold drinks, it was so sweet. We went out to a late dinner at a local pub, which had delicious food. Ane was suffering from some heat exhaustion, and we retreated to camp for some R&R. What a hard, long, fun, satisfying day. It seems so absurd to put those four words together to describe the same thing, but they all fit. It’s so crazy here what we’re doing, what we’re almost finished accomplishing. Ben and I were talking about how it’s crazy to love this so much, to love the burn climbing long hills or the challenge of 100+ miles in one day. But it’s a good kind of crazy.
posted by elizabeth at 12:03 AM
1 Comments:
Hey, this is the kid from The Chambersburg Pool. I hope you enjoyed that kiwi strawberry slush puppy. It's my personal favorite haha. I was wondering what kind of training you had to go though before the big ride. You can get back to me at Zackrey_Running@hotmail.com. Keep in touch.
-Zack
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