Cool Breeze Century Part "The Other"

Well, blogging from my mobile phone (was I unclear that yesterday's entry was done from bed in the dark on my Treo?) during the ride went completely out the window. I just didn't have time, or was too tired.

The Motel 6 group I was with got to start line a bit late, and started at about 6:43am instead of the 6:30am time we were shooting for. Danielle and I were trying to ride with Grace and Diana, but missed out on that. By 13 minutes. Oh well. We kept seeing them coming out of the rest stops as were were entering them. There was a 500 foot climb right after the first rest stop, and an awesome 800 foot climb right out of the second stop (around the 30 mile mark).

The big bummer was that I didn't hydrate properly at the beginning of the ride or during lunch time, and I had some hard-core cramping going into the second to last rest stop. Well, around a mile from it. I'd felt it coming on and had drained my water, but it didn't help. My quadriceps went into complete lock-up contractions. I almost fell off the bike. Not sure how I avoided that, or how I unclipped. Every time I'd move, the cramps would get worse, so I just had to sit and wait that it would go away. Really scary. Danielle and I were way ahead of the group we had started with. She was really awesome to hang with me instead of taking off. I drank most of the fluids that Danielle had left. Eventually my quads unclenched, and I eased the next mile into the rest stop. We must had been there for an hour, me eating bananas and drinking copious amounts of water. A ton of water. I downed a bunch of my electrolyte drinks too. I thought I was over-packing them at the beginning of the day. Wrong!

I was still cramping as we left the rest stop. Takes a while to absorb fluid, I guess. A bit of a cramp again 500 meters out, so we pulled into a parking lot. So frustrating. Saw Lem and Courtney go by. Waited a few more minutes, and I said, "Fuck this, I'm feeling better, lets go!" I guess I'd absorbed enough water at that point, as the cramping eased off. We caught Lem and Courtney 20 minutes later, and rode with them the rest of the way.

At the last rest stop, there were popsicles! They were hyped up by everyone who talked about Cool Breeze, but they were just ok. Just remembered that I hadn't talked about the rest stops. Tons of porta-potties, with Purell dispensers in them, and foot-pump sinks. They had tons of food from Costco: bananas, cantalope, trail mix, bagels, muffins, peanut-butter, jelly, bread, water (tons of water), Country Time lemondade, and on and on. Courtney complained about the sameness, but I welcomed it.

Funny sign at the last rest stop that Courtney and Danielle had fun at:

The ride distance was 102 miles, so we stopped to take a picture at the 100 mile point:


(Lem, Courtney, Danielle, Me)

Costco dinner after the ride hit the spot. Drive back with Danielle was awesome. Drives are better with someone to be chatty with.