I know, it's been awhile since I updated this. It's been a less than fun February and I'm glad to see the majority of it in my rear view mirror. It's been tendonitis, bronchitis, a sore quadriceps muscle. It's been friends in intensive care and a funeral for one of them. Like I said, I'm glad to see February gone.
I'd planned yesterday's route out as an experiment to see if the tendonitis was healed and if my body was back up to riding a reasonable distance. I wanted familiar terrain so I could judge my effort off past rides. I also figured that my McKinney, Weston, Gunter & Celina loop would give me a decent 62 miles for my experiment. Since I've ridden this loop quite a bit, I'm more than familiar with it.
The ride was also a trial run for some new bits of stuff that I've added and or changed on my bike. I redid all of my cable runs to get rid of the excess cable that was cluttering up my bars, I lowered my bars down by about an inch or so, added some new KoolStop Salmon brake pads for better stopping power when inattentive drivers pull out in front of me. And I also changed out my shifter system from Grip Shift twisters to SRAM X-7 triggers, (I did that mainly cause I caught a pair of them on E-bay for stupid cheap). Fortunately all the new bits of stuff I added played well with the bike and everything ran like it was supposed to.
This ride was also going to be another experiment in nutrition and hydration. Nutrition wise the Clif Shot Roks had been working well for me. The NUNN electrolyte tablets have been working well also. The combination of the two together however was causing a gastric reaction such that you could have hung a basket off me and used me for a hot air balloon! I decided to leave out the NUNN tablets to see if that made a difference. It did, in both good ways and bad ways.
Breakfast was a banana, two slices of toast with peanut butter, and an IHOP stuffed pastry, (I know, tasty but not nutritious).
Saturday morning saw Vicky and the kids off to the local trout derby early. When they left it was pretty chilly out so I hung around the house waiting for it to warm up a bit. Finally I was motivated to get dressed to ride and as it was chilly earlier, I started breaking out arm warmers, leg warmers, wool socks, an insulated vest, and a jacket. I'm really glad I stepped outside before grabbing the bike because the weather had warmed up. I ditched the jacket and headed out the door. Hindsight being 20-20 I should have ditched the leg warmers and the vest also as I was a little warm.
I did run across something interesting during the ride, I'd just cleared a series of hills I've nicknamed the triple bypass when I spotted something moving out in a scrub covered pasture. Seems breakfast on the cloven hoof was out wandering around with seven little piglets in tow. I was almost wishing I'd brought the 30'06 along. Would have been kind of hard though getting them dressed out with nothing but the little knife in my tool kit, not to mention hauling them home.
McKinney to Weston and up FM3356 was helped by a light tailwind out of the SW at about 7-10. The tailwind became a quartering headwind into Gunter which slowed me down somewhat. I was in the process of crawling up a long hill into the headwind when I saw one of Gunter's police officers out watching for speeders. I figured if he wanted to talk to me it was sure wasn't going to be about going too fast! Pulling into Gunter it was time to run south on Preston. Running south on Preston wasn't as bad as I had worried about, the headwind was pretty light and I managed to still make some ok time. Celina came and went and it was onto CR88 through a gap in Preston road traffic. I got back into McKinney and was still a little shy of my goal of 62 miles. A quick trip out on the local MUP fixed that though.
What worked and what didn't work. All the new parts I added worked great. The Clif Shot Roks worked great to replace the calories I burned. Plain water worked well to keep me hydrated during the ride. What didn't work was my clothing choices, I was a little too warm. Also, without the NUNN tablets in my water I had nothing to replace the electrolytes my body was consuming during my ride. My big point of failure was after my ride, I failed to push the water and the electrolytes and consequently ended up extremely dehydrated in the middle of my son's Cub Scout Blue & Gold banquet, think several hundred screaming children and a dehydration headache, it was "fun".
Lessons learned. Drink more water, make sure to replace the electrolytes, & plan the clothing choices better.
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