See my previous post, only Paul and Trev took me up on my offer to get in a few base miles (sort of). We arrived in Tucson Wednesday night and although the focus was the 200 km event on Saturday, Trev immediately felt it would be a good idea to rest our legs by riding up Mount Lemmon on Thursday. Paul and I being slightly more mature opted to only go to the 14 mile mark (Windy Point) while Trev, being less mature and more excitable, headed up to the top, a 92 km day for Paul and I, 112 km day for Trev. Of course the next day, Friday, we would recover and get dialed in for Saturday. After recovering by riding 113 km we were well rested for Saturday.
We headed up to Case Grande Friday night where the ride started and were ready to roll with 30 other brave soles at 7:30AM Saturday morning. As usual the ride was well organized and supported by the AZ Randonneurs with a special big thanks to Susan Plonsky. This was a fairly flat course, only 1580 vertical feet of climbing, the weather was outstanding, the roads quiet. The pace was fast over the first 70 km then it got really fast. We covered the 204km in 5:58 with a moving average of 35 km/hour. Trev and a guy named Scott laid down long hard pulls, Paul was right in the mix and I suffered to stay in the game. By the time we rolled into the finish there were the three of us and Scott left of the group. I can only say that I did much better post ride as Trev could barley get through dinner and was hammered on two margaritas. Paul had a lot of gas. A few games got played to drop an unsafe rider but otherwise it was a full on grindfest, I mean regular base mile ride.
Stephen
2 comments:
that "unsafe rider" here. I was working myself ragged on this season opener to stay with Scott and the rest of you snowbirds and to keep the other native in contention. Had I known I was freaking you out I would have tightened it up a little, but as you seemingly were all going full on, so did I. I abruptly pulled out 200m from the midway checkpoint since Scott's pull was more like a leadout, but the guy behind him (me) couldn't hack it. I forgot to apologize for that, but I was a bit winded and, after playing along with the faux-attack on the hill, maybe I didn't feel that I owed one.
I was happy enough with making it that far so fast (probably a 200k PR for me) and my racing season has started up nicely because of riding with you guys.
Hope to see you on another AZ brevet soon
-joey
I love reading your blog. Your blog post is unique and adds insight for me. Thank you for sharing.
Regards.
Bike Lover
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