Lighthouse Challenge

This weekends ride was awesome. Did the metric century or 60 mile ride. My buddy "Rick" and I teamed up to make sure we stayed at a brisk pace. Which was nice of him considering he could have left me a couple of times.

We started off great with a real nice group that was traveling at a good pace. It takes me a good 5-8 miles in one of these things just to shake off the nerves so I was proud to be moving along so swiftly without panting so hard. But then I had to get greedy. I rarely move into the big chain ring, I should but I just don't. So here we are moving along nicely and I switch up to get more speed. I don't know why because I immediately had to slow down in order to keep from hitting the person in front of me. That just shows my inexperience in the pace line. So I shift back down and I must have clicked twice because it goes into the small ring and the chain and the chain slipped off. I was so mad.

I moved out of the pace line and Rick did also while I put the chain back on. So here we go, we lost our group and now are trying to catch up with them. It is so frustrating to see the people in front of you and get so close but you just can't quite get up there.

I really believe that the frustration in that contributed to my high heart rate and heavy breathing. I don't think the extra peddling to catch up did, and I am serious about that. It was all mental. The only thing that kept me from psyching myself out was that Rick told me we were averaging about 20 MPH.

We got to the first rest stop and did the break thing. The first leg was pretty nice. It had a couple of hills but nothing too bad. The roads weren't all that great but we had a good time.

Hill reality set in awfully quick. My wife is from Wingo which is in Graves County, the scene of the crime. .I mean ride. She told me one time when I thought of riding to Wingo from Murray that is was hilly. It seems the rest of Graves is also. The whole rest of the route was hill after hill it seemed. Just when I would recover from one, bam! there was another.

We hooked up with two riders for the last 20 and that made it easier but man those hills were tough. Unfortunately I was not able to pull the group as much as I wanted but everyone was cool about it. One was a Mountain Biker and he wasn't a happy guy even though I figured the hills wouldn't be that bad for him. Of course he was doing a whole lot better than he thought he was doing. The other rider I had met the week before and I think he could have left us whenever he wanted. I sure appreciated each one of them.

My back hurt through the whole thing which tells me I really need to lose that weight and get some back exercises in but we did the course at 18 mph average and I am very proud of that.

The ride was great and once again the people were great. I belong to the cycling club in dues only and bought my bike from a place a lot of them shop so I knew the owner and he introduces me to people but all of these guys know each other. However they always make a new guy feel better. I am convinced it is southern hospitality.