Tough Day

I learned some lessons this weekend. The first is that the heat is not my friend! Saturday I decided to ride to Kimball's in Jaffrey NH for lunch with Annie and Jordan. The day started off well with Annie getting in a 9 mile run in the early morning. She looked great. At 10:00 I was off to Kimball's with an ETA of 12:30. I was going on a route to try to avoid 119 as much as possible and guessed it was around 40 miles but I should have mapped it first to know where the important landmarks were. I headed out over Oak Hill in Littleton. So far in my training this has been the hardest hill I have been on. Oak Hill is a 2.25 mile climb that rises 310 feet. Pretty good climb but nothing like what I had in front of me. I felt great on that climb and headed over to Ayer. I wound through Ayer, Shirley, and Townsend on relatively flat roads and was averaging 16.5 mph. I felt pretty good. Then I turned off on 119 and headed to Jaffrey. As soon as I turned I started to feel the combination of heat and the effort I was putting out. At 25 miles the hills started. I climbed 1000 feet over the next 10 miles with only a slight break at 7 miles. The heat was really getting to me and I wasn't sure how far it was to Kimball's. I actually stopped at one point and tried to call Annie to come pick me up. Fortunately and unfortunately, I had no cell reception so I had to soldier on. I phrase it that way because at the time I really needed a ride but once it was over I was glad to have made it the whole way. I rolled (slowly) into Kimball's about 20 minutes late. I was only able to eat have a hot dot (had to share it Jordan) but I did have an excellent Kimball's Mint Chocolate Chip Frappe. They do make the best Frappes. Annie enjoyed the first Fried Clams of the season. The rest of the day was spent driving home and doing a little shopping.

Lesson number 2 was learned on Sunday, and that was the old Boy Scout motto of be prepared. Annie grabbed another run early, this time with Buddy and I headed out for a ride around 7:30. I really wanted to get in two hours and had to hurry as we were going to a graduation party. My legs felt surprisingly good after Saturday and I was cruising over towards Carlisle when I hit a huge pothole. I knew right away that something was not right so I pulled over and sure enough I had a flat back tire. I took off the tire, got out my spare tube and realized that the spare (that was 10 years old!!) was flat as well. I was not prepared!! Luckily I had my phone and Annie came out to pick me up. While waiting for Annie I checked out my bike and realized that I had a front flat as well. I ended up going to the bike store, getting a patch kit and three new tubes. Hopefully I will be all set for the next flat. I guess it was a good thing this happened now and not sometime when I couldn't call someone.
We went to the graduation party and had a great time. Jordan took her first dip in the pool and she loved it. Next weekend I will be going for back to back 50 milers.