Wet, Cold, and Tired. First Metric Done!

Honestly? Its not anywhere near as bad as I expected. Could it have been better? Sure. Could it have been worse? Definitely.

Waking up at 5:30 on a Saturday is FTL but after I dragged ass out of bed and into the shower (I thought it would give me a “pick me up”) I was starting to get excited and the wooziness was going away. Met up at Alex’s with him and Eddy at 6:40 and loaded up the car. Oh I forgot to mention it before, but I got the bike rack done:

That’s not the finished product though, I painted the 2x4 black so it matches the car much better. I also still need to figure out a way to anchor it down with damaging the car but in reality it doesn’t move at all, so I may just leave it.

Anywho, we got the bikes loaded and the equipment in Alex’s truck and headed down to the busway by US1 and 152 st. We started further south than usual because riding the Busway for the most part sucks badly. The lights taunt you, they either turn red right before you can cross them, or turn green the second you unclip. With a light every mile for about 15 miles its not a good time at all. I’m not sure what time we got on the bikes but it was probably like 7:45 or 8am, we’re like a bunch of girls getting ready and take forever to get going. We took off down the busway and were enjoying the weather, it was in the mid 80’s and clear skies with no wind. A big difference from last week.

Once we got off the busway we headed west and started leaving civilization far far behind. As Alex acknowledges how far out we are we suddenly hear a pop/bang and I thought he popped a spoke, luckily he had just some how kicked the tail light off his bike. That was our first stop.

Another few miles in Eddy gets chased by some vicious dogs and lays down his fastest sprint of the day. Ok maybe they werent vicious, they probably weighed 20 pounds lol but that was the best laugh of the day. Luckily for me Eddy wore them down and when I rode by they just looked at me with a “the hell with it” face on. A few seconds later I look back and WhereTF is Alex? I look back and fuuuuuu he’s pulled over, turns out he got a flat.

First one with a flat had to buy lunch, teehee.

Homestead is basically rural farm land, cars are few and far between and open space is abundant:
1.

(download)

Quite the difference from the urban jungle that most of miami is. At the end of that stretch of road we end up on
392 st sw 217 ave. I can assure you most Miamians have probably never even driven that far south.
4.

And because I love autostitching

It came out a bit blurry, but I think the colors look pretty cool.

And I don’t know what was going on here.

I think I was scared of dropping my phone at 20 mph but I don’t look pleased. Ladies I assure you, I don’t usually look like this.

A bit after that we got to Roberts fruit stand

That was around mile 28, also the point formally known as good riding weather. Lovely Miami, it went from being a glorious day to dark, cold, windy, and raining. The weather remained crappy for the rest of the ride even though it only rained for the next 15 or so miles. But after that it doesn’t matter since the floor is already wet and no drafting is possible. Unless of course you enjoy getting sprayed in the face by a jet stream of water.

At that point we started deviating from the original map in order to stay in the calmer parts of the storm, I was worried we wouldn’t make it to the 100 KM mark. With a combination of the Garmin and Google maps on the iPhone we were able to navigate around homestead with no problem and in the end we made it to 62.69 miles, just past the century mark WOOOHOOOOO.

I don’t really have much to say about the second half of the ride, it was pretty miserable in the rain, and we were plagued by flat tires. Here’s Alex trying to kill my road morph!

(download)

Again, I keep impressing myself though, after the 40 mile mark my legs came alive and I started messing with the virtual partner feature on the garmin where you race a “virtual” bike. For a long stretch of rode I was up in the 19-20 mph range without any fatigue what so ever, just pedaling up front by myself. I didn’t think I could have that kind of energy so far into the ride. I was feeling good until basically mile 61 then I just wanted to finish. I did do a sprint at the end and made it up to 29mph which I was happy with considering I had already been on the bike for 62 miles at that point and the floor was really wet.

Alex as usual is a beast on the bike. And Eddy shocked us, he hung with no problem even though he’s barely been on the bike in the past month or more. When he gets back into the grove we’re all screwed.
Notice the pruned up fingers and wet screen. Good Times!

I’m glad we did it, it proved we can, and we didn’t do bad considering we only drafted for maybe 10-15 miles of the ride, we each basically rode solo centuries.
Now I’m going to go clean the bike AGAIN, lube it up and short my cable housings. They’re annoying me since they’re so long.

and i almost forgot. The Garmin "Datalogs" : http://connect.garmin.com/player/12645043

And the mapmyride info: http://www.mapmyride.com/route/us/fl/miami/290125218006480939

And thanks to Eddy for the fritas!

--
www.YanielCantelar.com – Cycling
www.Yaniel.com - Everything

Tags » autostitch biking century cyling flat tires garmin homestead miami rain road biking

5 September 2009
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Wet, Cold, and Tired. First Metric Done!

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