Day 4: Same Ol' Situation

Alpine Valley. Yesterday, I got up early and headed out for a bike ride hoping to beat the rain which was supposed to start late morning. I expected to get rained on, but I wanted to get as much of my ride in as possible before the rain hit.

I biked down to the IL border, then up through Sharon where I rode on the crappiest road I've ever ridden on. Then up through Delevan, Elkhorn and around Alpine Valley and home. I believe the last time I was at Alpine Valley was this concert:





Yes, it's been a long time. Yes, I don't go to many concerts. Yes, I listen to a lot of bands that don't have enough fans to sell out Alpine Valley.

Here's the route...





This is what the skies looked like when I left. I didn't take the camera because I expected rain, but I got lucky and the skies looked like this the whole time. We didn't get any rain until 9:30 pm.






I took it really easy in the beginning because I was afraid I would bonk. The problem with taking it easy into a headwind is that your ride takes forever, but I'm on vacation and I have all day so it's okay.

About mile 60, I still felt pretty good and I finally turned West to head home, which meant I had a strong tailwind the rest of the way, so I decided to increase my power a bit for the rest of the ride. And, by pure chance, I picked a route that had lots of straight, flat, smooth roads with almost no traffic. It was great. Lots of long stretches doing 26-30 mph without too much effort. Taking it easy in the beginning sure did pay off because the last hour of my ride was my best. My power was the highest and my average speed was 21 mph (tailwind).

Ride:
Total: 5:59:36
Distance: 101.78
Ave Speed: 17
Ave Power: 161 watts
Max Watts: 805 watts

Food consumed: 3 bottles of Gatorade, 1 double dose of Perpetuem, 1 Snickers Marathon Bar, 1 package of Fig Newtons, 1 bag of Cliff Shot Blocks. Total Calories: 1590 Calories Burned: 3500

Surprisingly, I felt pretty good afterwards, Good enough to spend a few hours cleaning my bike and putting on new cables and bar wrap.

Here you go, Toby, a picture of my new bike. I'll take a few more pictures this weekend and post them. The 'made in China' sticker is kind of funny. It's really small and on the inside of the fork leg, Yet, Cheri's bike says 'handmade in USA' in huge font on the seat stays. I found out that most, if not all, of Cannondale's carbon bikes are made in Asia and they make aluminum and aluminum/carbon bikes in the USA. Cheri's bike is an aluminum/carbon mix so that's why it was made in the US. That was the fun fact for the day.