long weekend ride

That's a trick title to the post, it was a long weekend and a long ride that occurred on the weekend. Guess I shouldn't have to explain my puns, but when they're that bad...

So last Friday I returned to my binge training plan. Hadn't ridden much in a week or so, then rode up to my folks cabin north of Brainerd with a couple of friends. It was a long day, but a great one. I started off early meeting Deanwood at CRC at 7:30. From there we headed over to Mark's house to pick him up and head north. Unfortunately I was way-layed before we even got to Mark's house, my boss called my cell phone. Unfortunately it wasn't just him, but half the staff at one of our plants too. They had a make-believe crisis that I had to talk them through, so after a few minutes on the phone my boss apologized for the call and we headed on our way.

We carpooled up to Big Lake, parked the car and hit the road the right way, on 2 wheels. We picked a route of county roads all the way to Brainerd. The roads were light on shoulders, but even lighter on traffic, so they worked well. We headed north and fought with a little headwind until the lunch stop in Pierz. We were all feeling the ride already by noon, so lunch was a welcome rest. We stopped at Anderson's cafe and motel to check in for some lunch. They certainly were accommodating and pleasant and I think were fascinated with the fact that we were riding our bikes up past Brainerd. They even made Mark some bonus steak fries since they thought we'd need extra energy. All in all the cafe/motel was odd, but we left full and re-energized.

From there we pressed on up county road 45 to Brainerd. The wind was taking it's toll on me and the pace was pretty fast. About 80 miles in my legs were done, cramps in both quads. Yuk, I hate cramps. I had to just spin them out, and eventually they went away but those miles really sucked. Once we hit Brainerd I was feeling better and able to start taking some pulls instead of just sucking Def and Mark's wheels. From there we hit the Paul Bunyan trail all the way up to Pequot Lakes. The trail was a welcome change as it was shaded and had little wind. I should probably say it was a welcome change for me, Def was still cranking away hard and Mark seemed to be doing great, I needed the break.

We kept on and finished off the ride. In the end I guess it was around 120 miles, but none of us had computers so we don't exactly know. Based on the overall time and the time we stopped for lunch I think we were holding about 20 mph for most of the ride, that's enough to make me hurt.

We got up to the cabin at 6 pm and had beaten the other folks meeting us up there, so we took to the lake. The semi-cold water was awesome on the legs, like instant physical therapy on my muscles. Then it was a nice relaxing evening waiting for the others to arrive.

to be continued....