I had a blast on this ride, although it did get a wee bit hot in the afternoon. Around 20 of us left out of the Duncanville parking lot promptly at 7:00 am, and I was instantly off the back of the group, as I had forgotten to do my inhaler, and I stopped to do that. Steve and Peggy hung back with me, and it was only a couple of turns later that we found Greg and Ray stopped, waiting for us. I figured the main group must have really been hammering already, and both Greg and Ray had ridden hard the day before, and said they weren’t going to stay with a hammering group. So, the five of us rode the rest of the ride together, although we did run into various other riders at times, including Terry.

I think I’ve finally figured out how to keep up with the faster rbent riders: have fresh legs while catching them the day after a hard ride, and I can kind of keep up (as long as the hills don’t get too steep). I was the only one of the five in the group that hadn’t ridden yesterday. I’ve been trying to do a fair amount of tempo riding on these long rides, since that’s what seems to be working best for my long recovery, and I did it a lot on this ride. Sometimes that put me off the front of our group, sometimes lagging off the back. I did a bit of sprinting, too, but when the last couple of sprints I did quickly raised my heartrate to 4 beats higher than I’d even seen this year, I figured I was getting tired and had better ease off the sprinting for the rest of the ride.

The pace of the lead group was plainly too much for some other riders too, as we caught a group of them before the first control in Maypearl. They were quicker out of the control than us, though, so it was just the five of us again when we left. The wind had picked up a bit, and it was getting kind of hot when we reached the turnaround at Covington, but it wasn’t terrible hot or windy yet. By the time we got back to Maypearl for the third and last stop, though, it was seriously hot. We made a quick unscheduled cool-off stop in Midlothian at 85 miles, and finished the ride just before 3:00 pm.

It is truly fun to do one of these rides with this many recumbents and friends. Thanks, y’all. Good job!