We rode All Those Miles today, and actually enjoyed ourselves! In fact, it was a little surprising. We’d psyched ourselves up (or out) so thoroughly, and prepared, and all…we found ourselves on the ride going, Wow, are we at this bridge already? Are we DONE already?
The biggest surprise was the approach to St. John’s. It’s a looooooong, fairly steep upslope. We’d totally given ourselves permission to walk it if we needed to (though we both rode it last year). So today, we shifted into low gears, and…way sooner than expected, we were at the top.
We finished the whole 10 bridges in less than 4 hours. Last year, I think it took us nearly 5 hours to do 8 bridges (well, we were also trying to stay together with a group).
Speaking of staying together: though we were only us two this year, one thing we did learn last year was that it helps to have distinctive costuming and/or headgear. When you’ve got thousands of people dressed in bike clothes riding bikes and wearing bike helmets, it becomes REAL easy to lose track of the people you’re with.
So we were at the party store yesterday doing wedding-stuff, and found some interesting headgear. And of course, I had to buy tights there too.
Because otherwise how would Mark be able to find me?
It was a GORGEOUS day. Last year was kinda overcast; this year was sunny and beautiful. It got quite hot, but not till we were done with the ride.
And when the ride finishes, you’re right at “The Bite,” a food festival. And beer. (Well, wine too, but the day was too hot for such things.) So we ate a few things. And then a few more things. And let me tell you, a good cold beer after a ride like that…Heaven.
Now we’re about ready to fall over from exhaustion. As surprisingly easy as the ride was, it was still quite a lot–and, neither of us slept all that well last night, or the night before. We had to get up SO EARLY this morning, I spent the whole night alternately fretting about missing the alarm and dreaming about missing the alarm. Sheesh.
But hey! It was so much fun, and we did it!