It’s kind of hard to believe that the horror of 9/11 was 25 years ago today. I was in my office in Charlotte with my bags in my car and soon to be headed to NYC for a meeting with Fresenius Healthcare. That meeting never took place, but now a whole generation is between us and that terrible day. With a later roll out at 8 AM, I made it a point to thank the good Lord for the last 25 years as we turned east into the rising sun headed to Madison, WI this morning.
Looking at the ride profile this morning, it looked a little like an EKG graph of someone with an irregular heartbeat – large spikey peaks spaced unevenly apart indicating steep climbs and descents and that’s exactly what we experienced. After going a little harder at it yesterday, my quads were feeling it on the first big climb about 9-10 miles out. At a 15% gradient, I was standing on my pedals and digging deep to keep ’em turning for 150 yards or so to get over the final lip of the climb. I don’t think anyone of us expected the ride to be that punchy – we just wanted to get to Rest Day!
Right before the next climb we had a SAG stop at mile 15 which was a good thing because the road conditions weren’t that great. On the prior descent, I probably should have been a little harder on the brakes because its hard to avoid holes, bumps and creases in the pavement at 35 mph and it can make for a white knuckle experience. But the ride was like that all morning – climb hard, descend fast and make the best of the pavement conditions. It was so bad today, the support arm on my Hammerhead navigation device broke due to the jarring that bike fame was absorbing all day – and for the last 30 days .
After a 2nd road side SAG stop at mile 38, we headed to for the Capitol building in Madison where the Trek Travel team had put together a great lunch spread on the lawn. It appears that this will be a busy weekend in Madison. Tomorrow is the Wisconsin Ironman Half (70.3 miles) and the Wisconsin versus Western Illinois football game and on Sunday there is the full Ironman. I’m sure there will be cheeseheads all around this weekend.
Later today we head to the Trek HQ for a tour and a dinner. Val and I will join the tour as soon as we can get there via Ube since she gets in a little late. As for our bikes, the guide team took them all to the Trek warehouse for a full examination – we can probably expect new tires, brakes and brake pads and perhaps new chains. I’ve been grinding on that bike for 30 days and 2,476 miles so I’m sure that it is begging for some TLC – and so am I! So glad to be here in the Heartland and to finally be at Rest Day #3!