Two good rides

I had two good rides in the past two days. Sunday isn't a normal riding day for Keith and I but since one of us wimped out on Friday and the other wimped out on Saturday we both had fresh legs. We decided to take a long ride at a pretty high speed.

We started out at a pretty good clip, a few miles per hour faster than normal and just started to spin. It felt great to be out on the bike. We noticed that there was some wind but didn't think about it much. We got to the half-way point when we noticed something: there was a LOT of wind. It felt like a summo wrestler's hand on my chest.

The problem with wind is that when it is a tail wind, you go slightly faster, but when it is a head wind you go much slower. We traveled into the wind for the last hour of our ride sucking the whole way. It honestly felt like we were going up hill the whole time. Of course that didn't stop us from occasionally turning directly into the wind, going up a hill and speeding up. Not sure why that happened but it hurt, a lot.

We got back and I wobbled to my room. Good ride. I haven't downloaded the data yet but I expect that my heartrate was in the 85-90% the entire time.

This morning's ride was supposed to be a short 15 mile spin at a nice low heart rate to recover from yesterday. That didn't happen. Not sure why but next thing I know, Keith and I are huffing and puffing, up a hill, into a wind, at a higher speed than we had been a few seconds before.

The conversation a few seconds later went like this:

ME: "Why do we keep doing this to ourselves?"
KEITH: "Dunno, must be your fault."

We took Lance with us today too. He can outrun the hell out of both Keith and I but we definitely have him once we get on a bike. Lance made an epic effort towards the end of the ride. He closed a 600m gap on a rough section of road. We didn't slow down, he just closed up the gap. And then it looked like he grabbed two handfuls of brakes and stopped. "Yep, that was all I had. Couldn't stay with you once I got up to you." Still, an awesome effort. It scares me, if he keeps riding with us, he is going to start stomping us.

I must find more things for him to do...