Weekend Day 2 - RailRunner Bike Tour

If you haven't read my post about Weekend Day 1, consider reading about Saturday's training adventure there first.

All caught up now?  Good.

Bikes on top of the car ready to go before sunrise

Today's adventure required us to get up at stupid-o-clock in the morning because the RailRunner ride was scheduled to begin at 6:30am and it's about a 45 minute drive from our house to the start point.

I'm really not sure why they thought it was important to start THAT early in the morning for a 40 mile ride, but it is what it is.  Part of the reason we opted to participate in the event was to give us a solid day2 ride in prep for the MS ride in early September

A variety of types of riders participated

This event has a photographer and I'm hoping there is at least one good photo of Husband & I.  I really liked one of the photos last year and apparently the event folks did too because they used it on their event page!  Anyway, I didn't take many photos today, just focussed on riding.  I am including this one that shows some of the diverse types of riders that participated (tandem and hand bikes shown) The majority were road bikes, of course, but we also saw a few mountain bikes and recumbents.

Unlike the course we rode Saturday, this course is mostly flat, with one section starting around mile 23 or so that had some slow gradual climbing.  We started off surprisingly strong, averaging 17.5 mph until the first aid station.  Slowed down a bit after that. And I was pretty slow on that climb part. Overall average ride speed (when moving) ended up being 15 mph for the ride, 2 hours and 31 minutes.  We ended up stopping three times, two aid stations plus one stop that we added.  No flats today.  Yay!  Also, it's worth mentioning that the course was very well marked and had alert and helpful volunteers.  Thank you!!

I should have mentioned that I had one of the worst nights sleep in a long time last night.  I was pretty tired when it was time to go and I was very low on energy once we got back home. Took a nap, but I'm still dragging.  Hopefully I'll sleep better than that in between day 1 and day 2 of the MS ride otherwise that 2nd day is going to be very difficult.  I decided to order a white noise machine to help with my sleeping issues.  I hope it works.  It's small enough to take with me when I travel too.  More on that later.  Should arrive Wednesday.