Afton Adventures

Last Sunday I finally decided I had to get my butt over to Afton for a hilly ride. Considering what I saw on the Madison course I figure the more friggin' hills the better off I should be come race day. Mark and I got up early and headed over there to meet Dana, Becca and Sean. We started out at 9am. There was a bit of an overcast so the weather was great for riding. I decided my strategy to try for the day was to stay out of my 3rd (largest) ring on the front and when I hit a hill climb, drop to the granny gear and give'r more rpms instead of mashing the hell out of my quads. So not long out of the gate we come to a long hill. I drop to my small ring and started slowly going up the hill. Felt pretty good. Wasn't moving very fast but I wasn't burning out my legs either. A few minutes into the climb, Mark and I were a bit ahead of Dana and Sean on this quiet stretch of road. We hear this "creek, crack, crack" coming from a tree. My first thought was it was an animal running out onto a branch but we quickly realized this huge limb was currently breaking off the tree and laying on a power line. Unfortunately Mark and I realized it right as we were underneath it so we scurried to the far side and got ahead of it. Dana wasn't up to it yet and luckily got off her bike and back down the road a bit before "crack, slam!" The branch broke off, luckily didn't break the power line and fell right across the road. Crazy!! I don't think I've ever seen that happen! Anyway, here's a picture.

And so we continued....

It was about an hour ride until we hit a place we had to stop and make a left turn to head towards Prescott. I unclipped, came to a stop and just as I put my feet down...."ssssss" was coming from my back tire. (This blog is kind of like a comic book isn't it? Slam! Pow!) I think there is a problem with my rim tape but in any case, we got the tire changed (but Mark forgot to put a little air in the tire before he put it in so he managed to do it this way and I managed to get a picture....

Then we had problems figuring out how to change the hand pump over to fit for my valve. That took probably 20 mintues before we were putting air in the tire. But all of a sudden. Pop! Oddly enough the stem broke in half on the new tire. Seriously??? Ugh....so now we are in a pickle. We are going to have to use Mark's spare tire to get me going but then we are riding with no spare. So now that our ride has been 45 minutes delayed because of this fiasco, I was stressing out on what to do. Do we head back to the car? Do we risk riding so I get my ride in? Luckily Mark's iPhone to the rescue, he found there was a bike shop about 15 minutes away. Off course but it was the only way we could keep going. I was so flustered by this point but I knew the rest of my day (Including Becky's bachelorette dinner) was going to suffer due to training. Something always has to suffer in order for me to get my training done.

The rest of the ride I can summarize by saying...ow, ow, ow.....it got to the point where my "girly parts" were so uncomfortable that my speed and climbing ability were severely affected. We were about 30 minutes from getting back to Afton and I just got the chills and my body was giving up. It was a matter of just surviving getting back to the car. Once we got back I was a sobby mess. Just couldn't hold it back. Ugh....I'll never survive Madison if I can't bike with some level of comfort.

I'll leave that there for now.

Sunday, we went to the Uptown Art Fair. It was a fun "normal human" activity. Especially the people watching. But this guy....

Really? no, not real

and this guy.....

is advertising Renegade Art :)