To go back to the beginning of the day, I went for an open water swim, which I hadn't really packed for. (see video)
The water was insanely choppy, almost oceanic. But it was beautiful, and crystal clear, so I went for it. I could totally see the bottom while swimming, that was a new experience, pretty sweet.
It took me 30 minutes in the car with the heater and seat warmers on full blast, plus 20 minutes in the hot tub to get my body temperature up again. I won't lie, I kind of enjoy the warm-up process after a cold swim :)
THE RIDE.
Fast forward past lunch and a nap, and I headed out the door for a 2.5 hour ride with hard intervals. The wind was insane on the highway, and I struggled to hold 36kph one direction, and was flying at 49kph after the turn-around. I hit my target watts though, and finished up the intervals after an hour. I got back to the campground, and joined up with my Dad, so we could finish up the ride together. He had gotten info on some "great 30 mile ride" from one of the campground employees, who was a cyclist. From what I can tell, this person is much more hardcore than me ;)
We missed our most important turn on the way out, which added on an extra 10 miles or so. I thought we were doing a loop, and by the time we realized we must have missed the turn, I figured it wasn't a big deal, since the road we were on connected anyway. It turns out it was actually an out and back ride, and we were now 25 miles out. Owell, these things happen.
I figured in order to keep the ride from going 5 hours, it would be best to find the road we missed, and take that on the way back to cut off the extra 10 miles. When we found it, it was no wonder we had missed it on the way out. Thankfully I can laugh about this now that it's in the past :)
This picture represents the nicest part of the road.
The rough part was entirely comprised of plum-sized rocks that I suppose could be defined as "gravel". I honestly wouldn't have ridden my mountain bike on this section, but I wasn't about to turn around. I knew what was behind me, but up ahead it must get better, right? Luckily it did get better, and we were able to make decent time, but I'm going to have to give my bike a lot of love to salvage our relationship. haha
I spent the rest of the ride feeling pretty bonked, and muttering to myself, "someone is going to pay" and "who could possibly think you would ride a bike on that", and "Wow, I really do not give Paris-Roubaix riders enough credit." I was getting to the point of just staring blankly at my handlebars, so it was fortunate we only had a few miles to go.
After dinner had begun to digest and make it to my muscles and brain, it slowly dawned on me that I would look back on that ride and laugh. Even writing about it now, I'm smiling just running it through in my head. It was a great experience that I shared with my father, and I know plenty of guys my age who would kill to have sport that would allow them to have such a wacky adventure with their Dad.
So that's how my 2.5 hour bike ride with intervals turned into that, plus another 1.5 hours; making it my longest of the year, first ride on a gravel road, and most memorable ride ever.
Good times.
