Forecast for the day was light precipitation in the morning, but warming up to low 60s and sunny skies after 11am. Plus 3000ft of climbing, which I anticipated would warm me up a bit. So I donned a tri-top, arm warmers, tri shorts, and my trivent bike shoes with no socks. At the last minute my unofficial coach, Denise, threw me a pair of her socks so that my tootsies would be a little warmer. Good call!

We all started at the club instead of the official starting line, but since we also finished at the club, the mileage was the same regardless. However, this put the first rest stop only 2 miles (downhill miles) from when we began. Of course we had to stop for cookies. We had just done a hard swim and needed fuel!

The majority of the ride was on gentle rollers through back country property and farms. It was a pretty area, but if it had been sunny, I think it would have been gorgeous. We made it to the second rest stop right about the time we were all needing to use the facilities, so that worked out great. The restroom had a blow heater for drying hands, but I took my feet out of my shoes and tried to warm up my toes with it. Rather unsuccessfully, too bad for me. I downed more cookies, some chips, some more cookies, some trail mix, and a few cookies for good measure. Unfortunately, a notable hill came up to bat right away and those cookies in my belly weren't feeling too yummy anymore...

One thing about me is that I hate hills. Detest them. And when I'm on group rides I won't shut up about them. Me: When is the next hill? Is the next hill big? I don't know how I'm going to get up that hill? I hear a big hill is coming up, do you know when? Where is that hill?

It's ridiculous and I'm sure irritates the crud out of everyone, but I can't help myself. On this ride, I had heard of a notorious hill coming into the town of Felida. Soon enough, we were climbing a pretty big hill and I had to stand for the last 1/4 of it. I get to the top, totally gasping for air, and ask Denise if the Felida hill is worse than this. She laughs and says that WAS the Felida hill. Whew, no more hills!

We took off at a nice clip and I had no problem keeping up because I knew I was done with difficult climbs. Yay! Cue another big fother-mucking hill. WTF? Where did this come from? I had to stand about half way up and had to repeat lines from Bob's spin class in order to keep from stopping. "Don't be a SISSY! Suck in your fat gut! You don't want to be a SISSY, do you? Take the pain!" Thankfully, that really was the last of the big hills. :-)

We made a quick stop at a local Starbucks to warm-up, another stop at Clark College to check on a t-shirt that Tom never received in his packet, and then headed back to the club just as the rain started to come down. 67 miles actually went by pretty quickly.

Wear clothes!

Donned bathing suit and jumped into the jacuzzi. Ahhhh! Then off to hot coffee with the girls, a hot bath at home (was still not warmed up), and then a day of lounging around the house.


Well, I do kinda miss my granny gear that I have on my road bike. But the new P2C performed like a dream. And I think I want to marry my saddle.


This is a great organized group ride. Maybe next year I'll do the century.