Normally we try to keep our four weekly rides lined up something like this. Thursday we leave Lake Worth at about 5:45pm and head down south on A1A, we call this the Boca ride. However, the actual Boca ride heads north and Jari & Alex normally join them, its way too fast for the rest of us stick with for long but we may get a few miles flying with the fast guys. After a lightening warm-up we settle back down to a steady tempo on this 26 mile ride to Linton Blvd and back.
Then Saturday morning at 7 AM we head down the same route normally with about forty to fifty other riders, and again we usually get dropped from the group sooner or later, but thats not really a problem as Saturday is our long ride. We are trying to pump up the milage by about 5 miles every week on this ride, and keep rest of the week pretty much the same constantly.
On our Sunday afternoon ride we usually leave from Mark's house just with our own crew and head to Wellington's Aero Club area for a nice easy 25 mile or so spin.
Monday is officially our recovery day for all the group riders in our area and sometimes we ride the ladies ride leaving from Southern Blvd heading to the north end of the Palm Beach island. That sometimes feels even too easy but its good practice to ride in a big peloton. Or we may ride with a bit of a faster group heading south and forget the recovery.
Well last Saturday morning it rained so we skipped our ride and moved the long ride for Sunday morning, and actually that was one of the best things that could've happened!
Fridays gym class in school was brutal, and I was sore everywhere so an extra day of rest was very much welcomed! Oh, I don't think I have even mentioned yet that I'm in 10th grade at Oxbridge Academy, and this blog is part of the curriculum in my english class. I'm really enjoying my first year at this awesome school! Any way, so last Sunday when my dad and I did our long ride for the week, it ended up being a forty three miler, my longest ride yet! It wasn't exactly a tough ride, we had some wind going back so that helped boost our speed; we averaged seventeen miles on our clocks. The ride wasn't easy by any means though, in my mind I like to think of it as double my usual rides, or two and a half hours on a hard saddle. On top of that, on our way back we missed the peloton we were trying to catch, and the storm clouds above us began pouring. We got soaked with freezing cold rain, and since we were moving at a decent speed, the wind roared by my ears while I was shoot by water droplets. The main thing I remember was not being able to see through my sunglasses, and then taking them off and having even worse vision. It some what inspired me though to create mini wind shield wipers for sun glasses, but as of now that’s not working out to well.
There was some good news though, we were able to out run the storm and reach dry land in a few miles, so I dried up pretty fast. Plus it refreshed me, for the final 15 miles or so. The last of the ride went very smooth, and we kept our steady pace because Jari came to pull us in the end! It was a successful long ride and a goal accomplished for me. Up next is fifty miles, which you will hear about very soon. Until then I'll be cruising our usual rides, and doing homework; but ill be back, real soon!
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