A tale of 2 rides.

I hit up Mike and Molly's last night, and consumed multiple pints of Miller High Life. This resulted in a rather late morning. After sitting around trying to motivate myself to get out on my bike for several hours, I finally managed it around 1pm. My plan was a shortish easy spin, so I took my camera out with me.



Its always amusing to attempt to take photos of a ride... particularly in central Illinois where most of the pictures just involve corn fields. Oh well, I have come to accept this


I have actually obtained a new Ritchey WCS "Wet White" stem for the bike. Sadly, I found my top cap to be stripped and haven't gotten a chance to put it on yet.



Anyway, mysteriously, I felt really good going out. I ended up doing a few hard efforts and much to my surprise set a new 5 minute power record for the year (~330 Watts, but still good for me). Who knows, maybe I am actually starting to get into decent shape again.



On the way home at around the corner of 1200E and 400N I decided I wanted to ride home through Philo. I sent Matt Gambino a text asking what the "main street" was. He told me a group was heading out on a ride that direction later in the evening and I agreed to go. I sort of forgot about this on the way home.

As an interesting aside... I got stopped by a train. This hasn't happened to me in quite a while.



So.... I get home make myself some protein filled smoothie and sit down to do my traditional obsessive examination of my power data. This is when Gambino sends me a text reminding me of the ride to Philo... in like 45 minutes.

I am home just long enough to see Thomas harass a snake and change out of the spandex into some more casual riding apparel.




Then off again on the second ride of the day. This was bound to be phenomenally more low key then earlier in the day, I was fine with that. The whole point (as far as I knew) was to drink beer at the Philo Tavern.

Here we are on the way out:


The surprising thing is that I managed to get some pretty damned decent efforts in.

The several 1min - 30sec spikes were what I like to refer to as "Where is Gambino going, he's gotten like 100 yards ahead. I guess I should probably catch up" spikes. They managed a 450 Watt 1 minute and a 620 Watt 30 second. Not bad for a casual ride I did in "Knickers".

The Philo Tavern was surprisingly cleaner and more food serving that I expected. Regardless, the served me a couple pints of Sam Adams to replenish some carbs.


Good times... In order to sum things up lets look at the details of the two rides

Ride 1
02:00:39, 30.6 Miles, 1,203 KJ of work.

Ride 2
02:08:26, 28.8 Miles, 828 KJ of work.

All in all, I think I have earned tonight's dose of Miller High Life.

This weekend is Rhetts Run MTB race in Columbia MO. I am not going to lie. I am very excited about this fact.