The worker's ride was yesterday, the 22nd of September.
At the ride start they said it was an 80% chance of rain, so we knew we
would be wet.
We didn't know it would be raining just in time for the first
climb (and DESCENT).
It absolutely poured on us going up the second climb,
but it stopped raining for the
actual descent. We had a break for about 30
miles to lunch, then it started raining
again going up Cobb mountain. It
seemed like an entirely different hill than on Davis.
We had rain/wet roads
for at least 60% of the day. Not sure what it was, but the day
seemed to
take a big toll on everyone. Russ and I went with the 4:00 group (rolling by
4:20) and finished at 7:50. No one from the 5:00 group (including all the
rest of the ACTC'ers)
passed us during the day, which was weird because we
were struggling so bad. We saw
Spencer at lunch and kept hearing that Joe
and Dave and Deb were just behind us as
we would be leaving the reststops.
That was the longest we have EVER spent on the
tandem. Russ was digging deep
from around mile 80 (I am always on the hairy edge, but
it was really
different for me to see Russ at that level of discomfort).
Overall a good reminder that doubles are just plain hard, Goretex is
amazing, and newspaper
bags can be a godsend to keep your feet warm and dry
on a wet day. We never got cold,
which is really surprising.