This a a recent picture of me doing the Horsefarm One-Hundred near Ocala, Florida. I remember the ride very well. The ride had a bout 500 riders of varying capabilities. Many were University of Florida students 40 years younger than me. Needless to say I got caught up in the excitement of the ride and took out too fast. No slow pace for me I thought. Well I got swept along with a group of about 20-30 riders for about 25 miles. The pace was fast and the riding seemed easy. Then it changed. We had one small hill I think and it was over. My legs were like rubber for the next 75 miles. I eventually was joined by Brett and some other riders I knew and rode along with them at a slower pace for the rest of the ride. So when I think about the trip across America I don't want to emulate that ride. I plan to pace myself each day and enjoy the ride. Hopefully there will be someone who rides at my pace but maybe not. In that case it may be me alone as in the picture to the left. We'll see.
I'm back in Poulsbo now and took a short cold ride today. Would have gone further but I didn't dress warm enough and the wind chill was just a little too much(45 degrees and 15mph wind). What a change from Florida. Only went about 14 miles but as you can see got about 1100 feet of elevation gain, more than what I got in 60 miles in Florida. I understand that the Appalachian mountains are more difficult than the Rockies so hopefully the hills around here will get my legs in shape. Will add a layer tomorrow and get some more miles in with the elevation gain.
By the way the chart below is from alltrails.com. The charts are created from my Garmin data but are supposed to be more accurate than the Garmin or iphone data as far as elevation information is concerned. I'll be checking the site out as well as another site that works well for creating biking maps called biketoatser.com
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