Wet and Tired

Woke up early this morning to get out and back onto the GCT HIM course for some more brutal hills. Arrived at the park to some serious wind and thought, this could get ugly. If only I knew then...

Once at the park my stomach was in knots. Hasn't felt like that since Boston. Nothing sounded appetizing and I was afraid I would have a hard time getting in nutrition today on the bike. I made sure to grab a gel and take two bottles of Gatorade as well as my camelback full of water just in case.

The ride started off with a blunder. I realized immediately I had forgot my cell in my trunk so I grabbed that as the group sped away. I had this eerie feeling I would need the phone today.

My legs were tired but they didn't feel too bad. I knew it would be a long ride but I was okay with that. It took me about 10 miles to catch up as I managed to hit almost every red light on the way. A few people out for shorter mileage went flying by me, which kinda ticked me off as they immediately pulled into a parking lot. Oh well I was in it for the long haul today.

It was really hot and really humid this morning. I made it up the first killer hill without too much trouble but was sweating way more than yesterday. I started to worry about my fluid intake but figured I could always hit up the drive through around mile 40 for some Gatorade. I took a gel and tried to eat some of my peanut butter crackers, my stomach was still off at this point but I got em down.

JT was off and flying as TriSara and Iron Johnny and I took our time making sure to stop and refuel or rest in the shade if heartrates got out of control. At some point we stopped and I filled water bottles from a spicket. Of course Sara gulped a huge amount down as she was out of water and was looking forward to it, to my surprise she almost vomited. Well water, chock full of minerals, mmm. So we headed on our way. We tackled most of the major hills and were getting into the last 20 mile stretch when it started to sprinkle, get extremely windy, then it started to pour. We tried to wait it out in the rain under some trees on a hill. We went from being extremely sweaty to being drenched and cold. It looked like it was going to let up so we decided to soldier forward. I gracefully proceeded to slide on my rear end down the hill and into the mud, lovely. We hopped on the bikes and headed into the rain. Yeah that's when we saw it, the last of the major hills on the course. We weren't going to have any momentum going in because of slick roads and cars were flying by at 45+ miles per hour. We saw an open garage and hoped that the owner would take pity on us.

We proceeded to wait about 45 minutes for a taxi van to come and "rescue" us. $35 later we were back at our cars and we all decided to call it a day.

I am super glad we got in all the major hills. Obviously disappointed that we didn't get in the full course, but I will more than make up for it next weekend in Wisconsin!

Gotta love this weather in the midwest :)