tri state tour - day dos

Cyclists and triathletes love numbers. How many miles/kilometers did I ride today? What was my average speed? Where's my heart rate at? How many rpm's am I pedaling? What wattage am I riding at up this climb? The problem with numbers is that A.) they may not reflect what actually took place during the ride (power would however, but not everyone uses a powermeter), and 2.) if you spend all your time looking at and analyzing numbers during a ride, you may miss out on a spectacular experience.

Yesterday started with an almost perfect ride. I'd say perfect, but is their such a thing? If there is, than this ride is it. The air temperature was perfect in the mid 70's. The sun was out. There was a light breeze. We rolled along beautiful country side for the first 75 minutes, where we then regrouped and did the 8 mile time trial. I sent each camper off one at a time, one minute a part. The course is marked each mile and is a straight shot along route 63 with little traffic, nice rollers, and no intersections to worry about. Greg Pelican was the second to last to go, and then one minute later, I headed out. There's nothing to like about a time trial if you do it right. It should just hurt like hell. If you are very fit, it should hurt like hell - you are just going faster. I was impressed by the effort put out by all. In particular, Annmarie posted the fastest woman's time to date on this course. I did look at my power quite a bit during this ride, managing the ride and gathering some data.

We then rolled onwards around twin lakes and then up 41 into Massachusetts. The scenery was really amazing today. We made the left in Egermount and began the five mile climb up over Mt. Everett, and down the descent on the back side into NY, before stopping and having lunch at Bash Bish Falls. Bash Bish Falls is a place that never gets old, and each time there I see something different. Soon, it was back on the bikes and on the rail trail pass that follows route 22 south towards Millerton, NY, then back into CT. Some numbers; We began riding at 8:30am and got off our bikes back at The Interlaken at 3pm. What the numbers don't show are the fact that this was Sue's longest ride ever, or the huge hawks we saw, or the turkey vulture hovering over Annmarie, ... What they do show is that this ride had it all - long stretches of rollers, long climbs, steep climbs, great descents, a time trial, lots of quality. This was just an amazing day and if you love to ride your bike, well, as I said, it doesn't get much better.

We headed out for a brick run in the trails around secret lake, and then walked down to the lake behind Hotchkiss Boarding School and soaked our legs in the cold water. Then, I did some assisted stretching with each camper. The day wasn't done yet though! We headed over to Hotchkiss to swim in their $25 million pool. I kept the swim session on the easy side to let the athletes loosen up. I did some stroke work with each of them and then, the training day was done. Another great meal - I had a nice NY strip steak, and the full day was done. Not bad at all!