Date: 6/5/2015
Time: 9.30pm
Weather: Sizzling hot
Location: Westwood Baptist Church, Zanesville
Today's ride was brutal. We all knew that with a rest day two days ago, and 50+ mile on flat roads yesterday, today's 85-mile ride with 6000 ft elevation was gonna kill us. We had a brief meeting every morning before we rolled, Ben was saying that today's gonna be hard with uphills and downhills, but he did not mention explicitly how hard it was gonna be though. Idk why I thought we were all ready pretty early this morning but we still rolled out at 7.30am though. I have Andrew, Haley, Sarah H, and Lisa riding with me today. We were actually the second group to roll so I thought we will be going at a good speed today. 15 miles in Lisa had a flat and that took quite some time. Most of the groups passed us. I wanted to get as many miles done as possible in the morning (before noon) because I know that I'll be so tired when the sun is high up and after lunch.
We stopped at mile 25 but I was already getting tired from all the climbs. Lunch was at mile 45 and I swear I was already very tired already. I had only one PBJ sandwich and I don't feel like eating anymore. Then we went on for more hills. The weather was so hot that the van had to drive the water to us because everyone is already out of water by mile 60-ish. There was supposed to have a rest stop at mile 65 but there was a gas station at like mile 73 so we just went there for our third rest stop. Towards the final 10 miles there were still a couple climbs. Zzz
We went on hills, gravel, super curvy roads, basically all of the bad road conditions that we could ever get. I lost count of the amount of hills that we climbed already. The uphill speed was averaging between 3-5mph while downhill speed was 30-35mph. Now imagine how steep the hills are okay. Nightmare was, I got chased by two dogs going up one of the hills, that was the fastest I pedaled through the hill. I was also yelling "Save me!!!" Soooo loud hoping that the dogs will go away. They did though eventually hahahhaha
I felt like I was almost crying already going uphill cause they're really sooo tough. I mean people who know me for awhile knows that I'm just a person who never really cry easily. But this time I really felt like I'm out of energy. I was already on my lowest gear, water was running low, and I just couldn't pedal any faster. Ugh.
Anyhow we made it! 85 miles, 6000 ft elevation, 7.30am-5.40pm, such long and rough day!
Thanks to the church for providing us with free Chipotle, cheesecakes, brownies, cookies, and fruits! Thanks for preparing us breakfast too tomorrow! Thanks for shuttling us to the fitness center for showers too! Also much thanks to the fitness/gym center for providing us with free showers! Ahhh so many good people!! We met one 79 year old lady in the bathroom, and I really wanted to do a portrait with her. So I went to look for her at the tracks after my shower. Had a good 30-minute talk with her. She said if only I talked to her before she started her walk on tracks, before she gets sweaty, she'd definitely do portraits with us. Her name is Joan, she's a breast cancer survivor. She always bring one girl to the Genesis Hospital for treatment (not sure what relationship are they though). She talked a lot and was really amazed by what we are doing! She also told me that the boss who owns the fitness center would like to arrange local media to share our story if only we arranged our plan with him earlier. Well we weren't planning on that but welp next year's team might be able to get to meet more people in Zanesville hopefully!
Off to Columbus tomorrow! It's gonna be a shorter and much easier ride tomorrow! Yay!
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