Wow! I am so
impressed with Brenda today. Ordinarily
today would’ve been a day off, but since the weather forecast has been calling
for some rain on Friday (which would ordinarily be a riding day) she and a
couple of friends from the group decided to ride today. 65 miles!
Now, you might be tempted to think, “Well, that’s only 5
miles beyond her previous high—that’s not really like blasting the old record
out of the water or anything.” But here’s
the amazing part—she did over half of that by herself! This is amazing because she’s always ridden
either with me or with the group. Oh, she’s
done a few miles by herself before, but never real long distances, and riding
by yourself is a whole new ballgame. For
one thing, it’s true what they say about there being safety in numbers. Motorists can see a line of 10 cyclists from
a long way off, and they tend to be careful about passing a line like
that. But when you’re a single rider out
there, sometimes motorists don’t even see you until they’re right on top of you,
and even if they do they sometimes aren’t really as cautious about passing. Not only that, but when you’re by yourself
you have to do everything. You can’t
rely on anybody else to notice traffic behind you, or approaching on side
roads. You have to do all the signaling
and make all the decisions about taking the lane. And, remember that whole draft thing? Well, when you’re by yourself there isn’t
one. You’re in the front the whole time.
So the way it worked was like this. She left the house this morning, and rode out
to a meeting place about 16 miles out. Then
they rode about 30 miles together (that Ft. Christmas ride). And then she rode the 16 miles back to the
house. And her average speed for the whole thing was 15 mph,
which is dang good considering her average with the group has been about
14.7. So not only did she not lose
anything riding by herself, she even gained a little.
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