Shiner: Epic!

 My friend Rick and I through our training rides have labeled certain ventures as epic or brutal. That's our standard description.  The discussion of allowing epically-brutal or brutally-epic labels surfaced yesterday after the ride,  in earshot from a normal person asking a cop, "Hey man, can I borrow your Taser?"  Sometimes you hear the weirdest things.  Anyhow, I bring this up because not very often is epic been in our vocabulary to describe an event all by its lonesome withou the qualifier brutal somewhere closeby.

 

Yesterday was an Epic day.

 

100 miles is a long way. But when it looks like this...

... it makes it a bit easier, for say, the first 60.  We actually averaged a few miles an hour higher than usual (partly because of consistent draft lines, low wind, and mostly flat or gentle climbs), but it is still excellent when it happens for the first 24 miles withouth a break.  We flew, well, at least, for us.

Only after the 3 hour ride time mark did I start feeling it.  Up until lunch it was partly cloudy.  In the afternoon, it became partly sunny, and the wind began to strengthen.  We hadn't had wind issues too much at all; crosswinds has been the norm, and even with those present, they were not strong enough to affect the draft lines singnificantly.

A few more stops we made, and we started geting sore and a bit tired. One stop we were resting, and I noticed something rather peculiar.  We were on the old highway alternate parallel to the freeway, at a small shack/store/bar/water hole in Wherever, Texas, and I saw something that made my mind think a bit:

Um, yeah, that's what I though initially as well.  They wouldn't do that, would they?  You tend to see the most interesting things at 15 mph.

As we rolled on, we chatted about what a great day all around it was, that it was a great idea to participate today, weather couldn't be better, totally enjoyable, excellent.

Eventually,

Only 10 miles to go! Whohoo!  Except (isn't there always one of those??) the 10 miles on the sign would not give us the elusive Century ride, the 100 miles, the reason why we had put ourselves through this.

And so, worn down, 90 miles in, we turned north.  North into the wind, stronger at this time, and coming directly from the north.  Thanks, God.  Anyone who rides bike in Texas this time of year knows that the wind can be severe.  Although it wasn't particulary severe this day, it was a severe pain in the ass.  It plays with your mind.  It screws with your being.  Heading down a hill and slowing down because the wind is in your face isn't a great confidence booster.  However, we continued on, and after a half hour or so of brutality, we turned back south on SH 95 to come into Shiner from the north.

The work was done; we had a tailwind, and we cruised into shiner as we had started the day, in high gear.  It was a  beautiful, exhausting, definitely rewarding and totally enjoyable experience.

Thanks, Rick.  A job well done.

I encouraged Rick to ride this year.  He had rode 10 years ago, and has thanked me a few times for ecouraging him to get started again. I'm proud. Three months ago rick got on a bike, and today rode 100 miles in 5 hours ride time.

Rick and I started riding around the end of January.  Today's ride included several significant milestones:

• Longest ride of the season so far for both Rick and I; 101 miles.
• First Century ride for Rick and I this year.
• Rick's first Century in a Decade. 
• We both crossed 1000 miles for the season with today's ride.  This milestone was recognized whe it happened for each of us, with a celebratory fist bump at speed. 

Well done indeed.