3rd Training Ride: Kennedy - Rouge Valley (42km+30km)

Let's call today the ride of Kvetch. I barely slept last night, the weather was dismal, the wind was chilly and there were hills. Lots of long extended amounts of pain kinds of hills. To be positive, there were also some really beautiful farms and country roads which helped distract me from focusing on the hills.

Today's ride also brought home the reality that holy crap: 610kms is a really long way! The ride was really challenging, lots of long hills that never seemed to end. When you hit the crest, often there was another one not too far in the distance. It was a good challenge though. I feel really good about having completed it. I also felt great about not giving in and taking the subway home later.

This ride knocked me on my butt a bit. After a 5 hour nap yesterday afternoon and consuming a whole large pizza to myself, I have regrouped and realize 3 very important things:

1. I need to get into that whole carb loading thing the night before a training ride because now things are getting serious

2. I really need to maintain a consistent schedule at the gym with lots of cross training and resistenace training.

3. I'm not in as good of shape at this point as I thought I'd be, but I'm well on my way and in far better shape than I was 10 years ago.

This post may seem very negative and ranty, that's probably the sore groginess talking. Honestly, I'm glad for yesterday's ride because I think that I desperately needed that dose of reality!

MAP: http://www.bikerally.org/trainingmaps2007/42k_KennedyZooLoop.pdf

There will be some training before next weekend, oh yes there will be :-)