The headwind was only bad for the last 90 miles

Hello all,

I thought I'd do a quick post and respond to some other posts and give you an update on me real quick.

I hope those of you who rode Saturday had a good day. More on what I did below. I won't be in town to enjoy the AYH century this weekend. I'll be off in NC climbing Mt. Mitchell. I've got my fingers crossed for nice weather down there. So far the long range forecast looks good. I might get out Monday for the St. Charles Co. soccer field hammer fest, and maybe for the Tuesday night ride that starts at the Synagogue in U-city. Wednesday night is Lynda's b-day, so the most I'll do is a hill workout on the trainer, and then 2 days off for rest and drving to go to NC.

By the way, Ron, the photo's of 3-state look fantastic. Thanks for sending / posting these.

This past Saturday I tackled my second long distance brevet. This one was 300k (187 miles). And of course I went to the baseball game on Friday night. The brevet started at 6am, so a 4:30am wake up call after hitting the hay at 10:30 was a heck of an early start! There were about 11 or 12 of us that started that morning. It quickly broke in to 2 groups, with me in the front group with 4 other guys. It was cold, damp and windy all day. It kind of felt like March all day. We started over in Edwardsville going generally East and South. We never got caught in the rain, but it was humid, cool and overcast all day. We had some tailwind as we started, and through the first part of the day. (The whole ride was in Illinios farm land, so not many hills, but nothing to break up the wind either.) The wind built in all day too. But this was a bad thing, because when we hit about the 100 mile mark we started to head West and North, and the wind that day was coming out of the NW. So by the time we made the turn we were dealing with steady winds of around 12-15 MPH, and I know a few gusts were getting up around 20 MPH. We dealt with that for about 90 miles straight, which was the better part of 7 hours.

Thank goodness I was with 4 other guys. It was a pretty good group of experienced / stronger riders. We worked very well together and stayed as a group all day. We stumbled back into Edwardsville at 6:08 PM that evening. 12 hours 8 minutes total, which includes stops. Our riding time was a bit over 10 hours and our average speed was about 18.4 MPH. ( Do your remember that "older" rider I told you about from the 200k? Get this - he rode the 300k the weekend some of us were in Chatt. He went solo, in on and off rain, in stronger winds, and finished in 12 hours 30 minutes. If I had been solo Saturday I'd have taken at least 14 hours. If it has been raining it probably would have been 15 -16.)

If anyone wants to join me :) , (you can join me for all or part) my next brevet will be a 600k over June 3 - June 4. That ride has a 40 hour time limit. It goes from Edwardsville to south of Carbondale and back. The riders will probably stop for the night in Anna, IL around mile 225. That way on Sunday we "only" have about 150 miles to get home (by 8pm on Sunday).

Talk to you all soon,

Mike