Today's ride started in Escondido at Kit Carson Park. The plan for the day was 70+ miles with lot of hills. We had our core group today with only Head Coach Rick as an additional rider.
2-Miles into the ride, Coach Rick and Mentor Jay cross tires and Rick goes down hard. He stays down for sec before getting up. He was a little scraped up with the elbow getting most of the damage. We are now brothers in elbow road rash. His jersey pocket full of GU energy gels also burst creating a mess. He says he's fine and we proceed on. About 25 miles in at the first rest stop, the other coaches convince him to pack it in for the day. Better safe than sorry.
We get a good pace going and start eating up the miles. The weather forecast was for hot weather and that it definitely was. Climbing Champagne Blvd along at around mile 50 or so, I start to really overheat. I had about another 1-1/2 of climbing left to the top and considered just going for it. The group had seperated into three subgroups during the climb. Amanda, Mark and myself were in the lead group. A few minutes behind were Liz and Mike and bringing up the rear were Claudia, Naomi and Mentor Jay. We're struggling along and I start complaining. Mark tries to break down the hill into manageable sections. The yellow sign is 1/3 of the hill, that big rock is 2/3, etc. Not working. We ride through the shade of a single tree and I think to myself, you should stop. Nah, I decided to go for it. Bad choice. Getting hotter and hotter and started to fall back. A couple hundred feet up ahead and see more shade. This time, I decide to do the smart thing and dismount and cool down. My buds, hang with me for a minute but then move on. I take my helmet and shoes off, sit in the shade, drink water and just cool down. About 5 minutes later, Mike and Liz reach me. Mike is a former EMT from the fire department and makes sure I'm ok. I am. He decides to stay with me and cool down as well. Liz takes of. About 10 minutes later the remaining part of the team shows up and join me in the shade. All and all, I got about 25 minutes of sitting and cooling. Made the world of difference. We push on and make it to the top where one of the coaches had smartly stashed an ice chest full of ice cold water. Heaven. More rest and Mark decides to call it day. I strongly consider doing the same but decided to see it out as there was only 12 miles left and I felt much better.
We made a little unexpected detour on the way back and got semi lost. Actually as Jay pointed out, we weren't lost, we just didn't know the best way to get to where we wanted to go. We had a comical incident where we took a frontage road and actually ended on a dirt trail for a bit before turning around. We finally managed to find the right way with the use of google maps on Jay's phone and headed in.
The high temperature for the day was 97.8 degrees. The ride was torturous with little to no wind and blazing heat the entire day. Something like 6 riders were taken off the course due to a combination of mechanical or physical problems. Poor Chris from the C group had two flat tubes and one shredded tire. Liz from our B3 group also shredded a tire.
After the ride, a few of use hit a nearby On the Border restaurant for some well deserved Margaritas. The funniest incident was when Jay refused to accept money from Naomi (now famous for salt stained bike shorts) calling it salty sweaty butt money. Too funny.
Only 3 more long rides left with Tahoe just over a month away.
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