Finally a long-ish ride!

Got in 64 miles in 3.5 hours Saturday. Cloudy but not too cold. Started by warming up before the hour of power. Seemed like they went slower than hair-on-fire up to Arrowhead Golf course. The wind was pretty fierce that morning and we were all huddled up so that the poor soul in front of you was going to get the full effect of the wind whereas you were nice and tucked in. Being that bunched up of course made the hive squirrely because when somebody would stand up to get more watts in the climb the dude behind him would have to swerve or even worse hit the breaks (I swear people in here in Co are strong but squirrely, at least in TX where I started racing, people had pack skills), causing a major ripple effect so three people out the effects were exaggerated! The lead group broke up into three echelons with me in the...you guessed it! the third echelon. It wasn't really an echelon either because out here we like to be guttered in the wind. It's nice to make the climb with a large group, at least they were going slow enough.
The downhill though was another story. We attacked hard. I just got a cycle computer and at the short but steep uphills we were still going 32 mph and we just kept slingshotting past the leaders so the head of steam going into the climb never let up; in fact we were accelerating to the point where people in front of me were getting peeled. At one point I was in my twelve, hands in the drops, ass on the point, toes pointing down drilling it with everything I had in the draft! Loved it but I couldn't hear anything due to my labored breathing. Groups kept separating off the front but we'd surge and they'd be pulled back in. This happened at least four times going into the reservoir. When we got closer, the park's service closed one of the entrances into the reservoir due to a running event, so we pulled a U-turn and drilled it back to the arboretum.
On the last series of hills I tried to organize a rotating paceline so we can at least take a break from the headwind but everybody wants to prove how strong they are to their competitors so it turned back into gutter central again. One particularly long climb popped me from a lead of six and I was in no-man's land. I sat up, took my hands off the bars and placed 'em under my armpits for warmth, and was going to coast this one in but a dude from the chase group said, "Hang on, we can catch em!" Really though, I wanted to chill on the way back, so of course I put my head down, hands on the drops and half-wheeled myself to the last guy in the chase group. Sho'nuff we caught 'em and after playing what seemed to be 20 minutes of shit-on-your-neighbor collectively we chilled on the downhill to the last stoplight. I add another 2.5 hours to this and I get a 64 mile trip today. Yea!
If I can keep this up I might be able to be competitive in an 80+ mile road race this year. Imagine that!

Saw my boy Javier Collier in my 2.5 hours of steady state piling-up-the-miles-with-my-iPod-on. Saw what he did with this new house (loooved it!), chit-chatted, made a cheese sandwich (thanks brah), met his new poochie: Emily, said our good-byes, and back to my truck I go. My bike was dirty after all the puddly spots I rolled over sans fenders.

Before my fam-fam woke put myself on the rollers and fired off another 7 miles before I mentally said, "this stinks." and summarily got my sweaty self off to make biscuits and veggy gravy for the breaking of fast.

Our NYTimes delivery person's slacking. After walking to our mailbox in my shorts and Sorels (we have a long-ish driveway and it's the tail end of winter mind you), we are conspicuously absent of a paper in our paperbox. No NYTimes. Dizzamn y'all.

Ooops bless you NYTimes delivery person (2H later)...