Miles to Ride: Day 5 – Riding Day 2

Wakeup: 6:00a
Hours slept: 6:23

Cumulative Miles: 109.1
Miles: 69.3
Time: 7:38:55
Calories: 2543
Ascent: 1414

Rode with: solo, Austin and Emma mile 50 to end

I experienced some parallels today as last year’s second ride day to Lake City, FL. I don’t quite remember the circumstances, but some riders ended up will 100 miles instead of 70 (?). Today, I took off from the host first. The front riders are to chalk the turns for those behind them. So, I grabbed extra chalk before I left since I knew I would be the lead for a while. Unfortunately, everyone took some sort of wrong turn. They veered right at a split in the road when the correct route was to remain on the road. I didn’t chalk it since it wasn’t a turn on the cue sheet and I thought it was fairly obvious to keep going left. Guess not. I got to mile 23 and took a break at a burned down house. There remained a pool table so naturally I set up snack time for myself there. I got a voicemail on my phone from Cassie (one of the leaders) that some riders took a wrong turn. I called her back and described the route I took. During our next phone call she decided to set up lunch where I was since there was enough space and some riders’ miles were starting to get high. Usually lunch is set up halfway through the day unless we are going more than 90 miles or it is hotter than 90 degrees. Then, there is a second lunch.

Cassie was on the way with the van and trailer, so I naturally laid down on the pool table to rest my eyes. I may or may not have dozed off, but I got a text message from one of my friends from last year (Emily), so I called her and we talked until 90 minutes later the van came. Soon my teammates began trickling in.I set up my radio and had some sweet jams going. I finally took off after being there for 2.5 hours. I took off solo again until about mile 50 I joined up with some guys briefly. Eventually, we settled into a group of the three until the host. We stopped by McDonald’ and Wendy’s to see if they would help us out with some food donations. No dice.