Times Bicycle Tour

I rode the Times Bicycle Tour with Alfie on Sunday- I didn't make my goals, but I had a great time. I summed up the experience yesterday in an email, so I'll cheat and just post that here:

It was a gorgeous day for a bike ride in the country, in spring, in Florida. Lots of oak trees wildflowers, foals, calves, sunshine, blazing downhill descents and a (damned) stiff breeze out of the East. We missed the start time for the 75 miler, and took off with the 40 milers, and out of a combination of factors (poor training, poor warm up, too much breakfast, not enough dinner, ride starting with a 4 mile climb) I ended up puking my brains out after the first 5.5 miles.
After which, I felt much better (and usually it takes me 10 miles to warm up), but we had lost a lot of the riders who would have helped pull us along at a better pace, and I had lost a lot of valuable nutrients and electrolytes. I pretty much gave up the main goal right then. I felt weak, and rode very poorly for most of the rest of the day (even had to walk up the last part of 3 or 4 of the climbs). Around the 30 mile mark my quadriceps started cramping up, but I finished the 40 mile ride ON the bicycle, so I'm glad for that. The idea of getting swept up by the sag wagon was mortifying. We ended up completing the ride in around 2:45, (+/- 14.5 MPH). I felt a little bit better seeing that there were people walking, stopped, or resting at the tops of almost every good climb (there were a lot of them) but was nonetheless disappointed that I didn't even come close to meeting my goal.

The summary: I had a really good time, and it was a gorgeous day in beautiful countryside, but from an athletic perspective, it was as close to a total disaster as it could get without entirely ruining the fun. I am going to have to take a good, hard look at the feasibility of an April 10th century.