A PR Day

Trek, before the Ride

Today was a PR day.  A Personal Record, which was the result of Personal Resolve (thanks to my friend Jen for that way of saying it).

I've ridden the 50-mile on the Tour of the Unknown Coast many times, back in my 20's and early 30's.  I stopped seriously riding my bike around 2002.   Sometime in January of this year, I started riding again, with an eye to riding the 50 on May 5th, today.  I trained for three months, riding my bike nearly every day, and running 4 days a week.  Today was an absolute blast. I rode hard and strong, and felt better than I ever felt in my 20's.   My time was 3 hours and 37 minutes.  The last 20 miles had a pretty strong head wind that just sapped everything I had.  Thank goodness for the man in his late 60's that I picked up at about 8 miles out from the finish line.. He was struggling with severe cramps, and he started drafting off me. We blasted the last 8 miles in, switching on and off to block the wind. 

I'm waiting to see the results on line, so find out how I did ranking wise.  On the way out, I was in the front group of 5 or 10 riders, but on the way back I lost ground in the wind because I was all by myself fighting for every mile.

When I got back to Ferndale, I had someone take a picture of me (below).

Back home, my neighbor took this one as I was unloading Trek... It must have been a good ride, because I'm grinning!

Looks like I need a new target to shoot for...