Hemet Double
 

One word that best describes how I feel today....WORKED!!!

I've done Hemet now 4 times and this time they changed the route. I'm not sure why, I forgot to ask. We had a group of 6, we all knew each other and had done at least one double together or more. We got the early start 4 am, yep 4 am. We got going right away, but my stupid computer wouldn't work, but eventually came on by itself after we had gone about 50 miles or so. The first 100 went pretty smooth, but one of our riders hadn't been training for the doubles and he was having some difficulty in the hills, but otherwise was doing okay. I had no problem riding in the front and even got some turns to pull. Still with all the waiting and not paying attention we ended up with a 7 hour century. Not what we had wanted, but with the early start, no problem.

Now for the second century this is where things started going south for me. Some of the guys like to take a shower and change clothes after the first one and I'm used to this as I ride with these guys all the time. But this time things were taking a lot longer.After a half hour there my legs began to get real heavy, waiting for them.And one of the guys (the one we had waited for most of the day still hadn't ate and wanted to) People who've done long distance riding will know what I'm talking about and even mtb'ers know you can't stop for too long or your legs will freeze up ( that's the best description I can think of ) so one of our other riders said she was leaving and I decided to go with her and another rider from NorCal that had joined our group. As soon as I got on the bike I knew the damage was done. My poor legs felt like they were full of water. It hurt just to go thru a single stroke and we had some major climbing ahead. Well, Suzy and Jim took off and got away from me, but I kept them in sight most of the way, but I wasn't anywhere near where I'd been on the first century. Climbed Sage Rd, which is a real biatch after you've got that many miles into your legs, in fact it's a biatch anytime. Finally what seems like forever, I make it to the top and found some of our group who had caught me and were waiting a few minutes for me at the top.

Now they've changed the route and I figured all the real hard clibing is out of the way.We haul arse down into Temecula and I get caught at a light and my group is long gone, but I figure I'll catch them again. Now here's where I really get screwed. I read the route slip wrong and make a wrong turn. I start climbing some hills, up and down, up and down. I look at the route sheet again and it said 4 .2 miles to the next turn, but I wasn't sure how many miles I'd already gone so I mark it from there. Well, a few more miles and sure enough I figure I'm off track ( anyone who knows me will not be suprized by this). I stop at a gas station and ask for a map, but can't read it as the print is to small and I didn't bring my glasses. I talk to the lady there and she tells me my turn is 8 miles back the other way. FLOCK,FLOCK,FLOCK!!! So off I go back to where I'd just been and it's up and down, up and down again and again. I finally get to where I made my wrong turn and find a friend there at the light that I've rode with a number of times. He's on his heavy bike as he's training for a 1200K (I think about 750 miles), and so he's a little slower then usual, thankfully this allows me to hang on to his wheel. He had a few others with him, they weren't that strong so I was able to ride pretty good with these guys. We rode till we got to a place called Rice Cyn and I was not prepared at all for this, it was harder then Sage Rd and now we have close to 150 miles into our legs. I got about 3/4's of the way up and bonked. I had nothing left and I'd run out of water too. I sat down and waited for some energy to return and watched as the riders I passed were now passing me. After a while I got back on the bike and slogged on up the hill, the never ending hill. It probably wouldn't have been so bad, but none of us were expecting this.

After getting over the top, my bud calls me on my cell and starts telling me to pick it up. This was the guy I'd left back at the lunch break. They were at the rest stop. Yippee, I can ride with someone who can read the route slip.

Well, from there on I worked as the puller and tried to get those 3 up the hills as fast as I could, but they kept dropping off so I slowed down as I was the only one left with a light and it looked like we were going to be doing some night riding. The rest of the ride was pretty flat but there was still that persistant head wind going that we'd been fighting all day long. We got in 15 minutes after our faster riders, so not to bad. Total time was around 16 hours and miles were 206, I got extra credit again so I got few more.

I'm still sore but not as much as I was after riding last weeks double at Solvang.

Next on the list is Mulholland Century (no, I won't be doing the double on this behemoth). This is next weekend I hope I'm recovered enough for it, it's got a lot of climbing.
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I'm not lost, I just......

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