Day 2 - Do my legs still work?
12/06/13 21:45
Thanks to our trainer, Mike Tallis, I had made it through the first day without any problems. The question was could I get going again?
As it turned out, the answer was yes. We were late getting started, and were concerned that the weather forecast was for thunderstorms, flash floods, and hail the size of baseballs along the route, but in the end the weather held off long enough to do the day’s mileage.
My first decision was to abandon the canal trail, and use the road, a really good decision. The second decision was one that was taken back in the planning stage, and while it was taken for very good reasons at the time, today made me wonder if I should have changed it. As I was working on the route, Angela did some research, and noticed that the prevailing winds at this time of the year in this area are from the southwest. Now if you look at the route map, you can see that that is precisely the direction that most of the route follows. She very sensibly suggested that I did the ride from St. Louis to Chicago, rather than the other way round. I wanted to do the current route, because psychologically it appeals to me much more to be cycling home than to be cycling away from it, and also I wanted to get the downtown Chicago bit out of the way in the early morning, not in afternoon rush hour. and how bad can a bit of wind be anyway.
Yesterday my decision seemed sensible. Most of the route was in sheltered areas and was predominantly west. Today, a major storm system has been moving through the area with winds gusting to 20mph. Riding through Illinois has the advantage that it is basically a flat plane, but the downside is that when the wind blows there is nothing to stop it. In a few weeks the corn may have grown high enough to provide a wind break for a recumbent trike, but at the moment the millions of six inch tall plants that I cycled by did nothing to help with the energy sapping effect of cycling into a strong headwind. One of the sights that I will add to my “not want to see again” list is a wind farm directly ahead of you with all the rotors spinning at top speed and all facing directly away from you, showing the rear face of their generators to you as they align themselves to gather the wind, confirming, as if you weren’t already aware of it that the next few miles were going to be an uphill struggle against the wind, even on the flat. Now of course if I had taken Angela’s advice I could probably have spent most of the day today, freewheeling!
Despite the wind I have managed to get a total of over 100 miles done, which starts to make the 350 plus trip seem as if it might be achievable. However, without Bridget’s support today I wouldn’t have been able to make it. She has scouted the route, leapfrogged me a few miles at a time and been there like the support stations that you see on the Tour de France to provide encouragement, water and additional sunscreen every time I started to wilt from the effort and the heat. Endomondo computes that today’s ride would have used 2,632 Kcals of energy and resulted in a loss of over a US gallon (over 4 litres) of water. She has been fantastic in her support of this venture, and without her it just could not have happened.
As it turned out, the answer was yes. We were late getting started, and were concerned that the weather forecast was for thunderstorms, flash floods, and hail the size of baseballs along the route, but in the end the weather held off long enough to do the day’s mileage.
My first decision was to abandon the canal trail, and use the road, a really good decision. The second decision was one that was taken back in the planning stage, and while it was taken for very good reasons at the time, today made me wonder if I should have changed it. As I was working on the route, Angela did some research, and noticed that the prevailing winds at this time of the year in this area are from the southwest. Now if you look at the route map, you can see that that is precisely the direction that most of the route follows. She very sensibly suggested that I did the ride from St. Louis to Chicago, rather than the other way round. I wanted to do the current route, because psychologically it appeals to me much more to be cycling home than to be cycling away from it, and also I wanted to get the downtown Chicago bit out of the way in the early morning, not in afternoon rush hour. and how bad can a bit of wind be anyway.
Yesterday my decision seemed sensible. Most of the route was in sheltered areas and was predominantly west. Today, a major storm system has been moving through the area with winds gusting to 20mph. Riding through Illinois has the advantage that it is basically a flat plane, but the downside is that when the wind blows there is nothing to stop it. In a few weeks the corn may have grown high enough to provide a wind break for a recumbent trike, but at the moment the millions of six inch tall plants that I cycled by did nothing to help with the energy sapping effect of cycling into a strong headwind. One of the sights that I will add to my “not want to see again” list is a wind farm directly ahead of you with all the rotors spinning at top speed and all facing directly away from you, showing the rear face of their generators to you as they align themselves to gather the wind, confirming, as if you weren’t already aware of it that the next few miles were going to be an uphill struggle against the wind, even on the flat. Now of course if I had taken Angela’s advice I could probably have spent most of the day today, freewheeling!
Despite the wind I have managed to get a total of over 100 miles done, which starts to make the 350 plus trip seem as if it might be achievable. However, without Bridget’s support today I wouldn’t have been able to make it. She has scouted the route, leapfrogged me a few miles at a time and been there like the support stations that you see on the Tour de France to provide encouragement, water and additional sunscreen every time I started to wilt from the effort and the heat. Endomondo computes that today’s ride would have used 2,632 Kcals of energy and resulted in a loss of over a US gallon (over 4 litres) of water. She has been fantastic in her support of this venture, and without her it just could not have happened.