6/18 Michigander Day 5 48 miles
The title of todays post was my response to the question if I was enjoying the Michigander. And it aptly sums up the day. After monster hills yesterday todays payoffs are huge. The first downhill today was a nice surprise, after turning around a bend I saw the road drop off into infinity with no hill in sight. I smiled and raced into it, I’m sure I hit at least 30 miles an hour on that downhill.
Todays ride reminded me a lot of Kula where it would take Derek and I 1 hour to get to a friends house on bike but only 5 minutes to get home. I’ve come to appreciate hill-work because I know after every hill is a downhill where I get a chance to catch my breath and the free fall is exhilarating. My knees finally stopped hurting today which I think led to a much easier day of riding, if I could only get rid of the saddle sore I’d be in fine shape.
The last hill of the day was a 2.5 mile downhill where speeds topped off in the 40mph range, i’ll take those free miles any day.
We had a fair amount of hill-work today but one particular hill was talked about by everyone at the end of the day, I nicknamed the hill “the sleeping giant.” It came at us after lulling us in a nice downhill segment around a bend so we really couldn’t see it. I was told the grade was at 8%, which would make it the highest grade hill we worked on all week. I saw a few people walking their bike up the hill, I just put it in granny- gear and trudged my way up it.
All in all it was an exhilarating day and I think I was close to firing on all cylinders finishing 48 miles in just over 5 hours. One guy I was following for 6 miles said we were doing 19mph =D.