St. Patrick's Century Ride - A Week Early.....

Rozmo and I did a bicycle ride in the town of Dublin, Georgia today. Because its name is DUBLIN, naturally the town goes all out for St. Patrick's Day. But because many, many, many people go to Savannah for St. Patrick's Day (particularly years like this one, when it falls on a Saturday), Dublin has its St. Patrick's Day-themed events beforehand.

That was a long-winded way of explaining why we did a St. Patrick's Ride a week before St. Patrick's Day. And I'm done with typing St. Patrick's Day.

We spent the night in Dublin, since I had yesterday out of school. It was about a 3-hour drive, so we would have had to leave around 5:00 this morning in order to get there, get registered, unloaded, etc. etc. etc. It was hard enough driving the three hours BACK.

I had one of those long debates with myself about proper cycling clothing this morning. I had two base-layer shirts, a thinner one and one lined with sort-of fleece. I didn't think I needed the fleece-lined one, but that was the one I grabbed out of the suitcase. Fine. Then I debated about the jacket. My usual philosophy is I can stand being cold at the beginning if I'm pretty sure it's going to warm up. Temperatures were supposed to climb into the 60's today, so I initially left the jacket in the car. "I'm tough," I said.

Then I went back and got the jacket, and boy am I glad I did. It did warm up (eventually), but the winds were brutal and NEVER let up. ALL. DAY. LONG. Have I mentioned lately (like in the last sentence or two) how much I HATE riding in the wind? It's probably a very good thing I was unable to donate blood yesterday (iron count was too low); I would never have been able to tap the reserves needed to complete that ride.

The terrain wasn't difficult, and the scenery was pretty. Beautiful blue skies, early flowering flowers, lots and lots of gorgeous horses.

And the wind.

Here's our map from today. If you look near the triangle (indicating starting and, in this case, ending point), you may see some squiggly lines that look like we got lost right at the end. I assure you that's not the case. This time.

The ride was billed as a century (100 miles) with a 55-mile option. We were pretty sure absolutely positive we didn't want to ride the century, but 55 was doable. When we got back to the recreation center where the ride began and ended, we had ridden 47 miles. Being members of the even numbers club, we had to ride around and around the rec center until we had the requisite 50 miles. I made the almost-fatal mistake on about our hundredth lap of saying to Rozmo, "Why don't we go for 60?" Luckily she had a deadline to get back home so she could go to her Supper Club, so she didn't take me up on it.

Whew.

We averaged over 15 mph, higher than I usually do on long rides. The extra exertion required to fight the wind and keep up that kind of average has sapped my energy. On the way home from dinner, I asked Hubby, "Isn't it about bedtime?"

It was 5:46.

Goodnight.