Ride to Nyack

Rode up to Nyack today with a friend.  The road was long and hilly and I was concerned that I would bonk on the way back... or worse, on the way there.  Having just finished a race two days ago, it probably wasn't the wisest move to go on such a long ride (my longest ever), but I had already committed and didn't want to cancel on this person again.

Getting up to and across the GWB was not as harrowing as I expected, although I was informed that it is usually very busy.  We rode up and out onto 9W and I was struggling to get myself into the right gear.  My legs felt fatigued and my HR was already too high to sustain.  I spent the majority of the first half hour trying to catch up and then losing ground again almost instantly.  I considered turning around and going home by myself, but I persevered.  I confessed my fatigue and a decision was made that I would draft to save energy.  This made me nervous, but I knew that if I didn't do it, I wouldn't make it.  So, I HTFU and made myself draft for the next ten miles or so. 

When we got to Nyack I felt much better than I anticipated.  We grabbed a coffee and some food at a little coffee shop, chatted and then hopped back on the bikes to head home.  I knew that there would be a lot of hills, but was reassured that it was just a few miles that were hard and then it was mostly downhill.  I appreciated the "forced" drafting throughout the trip.  Every time I was too far back, I would get the signal to get on the wheel.  Good thing too, because my personality is one to defer to the other person and not assume that I'm okay to draft.  I made it up the hills by adhering to the advice "toss it in a low gear and just spin it out" and once we were past the two to three miles of "hard" I hopped back on the wheel and drafted most of the way back.

We made pretty good time coming home and there are a good four miles in there where we were going an average of 21/22 mph solid.  I really liked getting into the zone and just riding the wheel.  My brain went into a total autopilot mode and I felt unaware of my physical fatigue, my speed, everything just locked in and I maintained good form throughout.  Overall, including some stopping (there was a bad accident on 9W heading up) I averaged 16 mph.  I'm pretty happy with this.

It was really fun to just jet down some of those long hills too.  I like to go fast!  Good ride.  I'm going to be sore and tired, but I did it.