The radar looked clear and the Weather Channel had dropped the chance of rain down to the single digits, so we left the ride on for 8am Sunday. We had a wonderful 47-mile route planned. I was a little skeptical about the mileage as we’d ridden 51 the day before and my legs were feeling it a little bit, though they did get into the game around four miles in.
Two miles after that, it started spritzing on us. It looked bad, but almost like it would at least stop raining. The rain intensified and soaked us over the next eight miles.
After six of those, I called it and asked to head home. My wife, much to my surprise, hesitated but relented. We stopped at the church in Lennon to use the cycling club’s portable facilities in the parking lot and I fired down a banana. The pastor, a cycling friend, came out to greet us in the misting rain.
The rain stopped when he was almost to us, all the way at the back of the parking lot… and, let’s just say, attitudes warmed with the weather. It hadn’t been a cold, nasty rain. It was a warm, gentle drenching. After the stop we rolled out and talk of a ride extension commenced. I was ready to go home and said so, but I could hear the disappointment in my wife’s voice as she accepted going home, so I offered a compromise. The compromise added about eight miles and would have us rolling home on her favorite stretch of road with a nice tailwind.
We’d taken it easy for much of the ride, eating headwind and rain the whole way, so neither of us was in much of a hurry. Until we got to Ray Road. My wife’s favorite stretch of road. It was all hands on deck, and we hit the afterburner. The tailwind push was awesome and we put the power down as the Garmin alarm for the segment hit the screen. Within the first mile I was looking down at the computer to see how far we had left. I was giving it everything I had, grinding on the pedals for every bit of speed I could get out of the Rolf wheels. We were up by six seconds on our PR but the KOM was slipping at a rate of a few seconds per mile. I was so tempted to ease up, but I wanted my wife to get the best time she could, so I kept it going, trying to balance effort with the amount of time we had left.
We crossed the segment finish down just 16 seconds from the KOM of 28-mph with a 26.5-mph effort and a third place overall finish. My wife got the QOM.
The last five miles were easy, too. I was hammered from the effort and I didn’t have any more “want to”. We’d gone from a 16-mph average to a 17.2 in just a few miles and I didn’t see any reason to take that number up.
And that was our Sunday Funday on the Co-Motion.
Fit Recovery 