Ow, what a ride!

Well, I'll post a short summary of our ride yesterday (2008/6/15 - the Longest Day - 208 miles). A longer version should be posted on my page within the week. We left at 4:48 AM (according to my watch) and arrived at 8:28 PM (again according to my watch). I don't have an average speed as my computer was messed up (I forgot to turn it on) but we're certain it was close to 17 mph as the other teams were reporting this and we left close to when they did and arrive before most of them. There were two reasons for the long length of time. The first was we lost our SAG, the second was the heat and humidity in the Pine Barrens. At our lunch stop the SAG was supposed to meet us in Allentown. He stopped in Kingston at a local deli to get lunch and he didn't see us pass him (we where doing pace lines and flying onto Allentown another 20+ miles ahead). So we ended up waiting in Allentown for 45 minutes for him to arrive. I made the mistake of not giving him my cell phone number and he didn't have mine (oops). So our lunch stop took around an hour instead of 30 minutes. Next we really suffered in the Pine Barrens, actually we began to suffer on Four Mile Rd (just below Browns Mills) and knew we needed more stops. So I modified the route to include another stop in the Pine Barrens. Earlier we added a stop early in the ride so we now had at least 20 extra minutes there. In the Pine Barrens we also hit heat, humidity and wind. It was reported that Woodbine, NJ (southern end of the Pine Barrens) had a high of 89F. I'd guess the middle of the Pine Barrens were higher yet. Add the humidity and the direct sun and we were riding in 100+F adjust heat index. The wind did us no favors as it was quite strong. We all suffered (every team, not just mine). I can honestly say that I think our team could have gone much faster as the last 23 miles were our fastest. We managed to up the pace to 18.4 for the last 23 miles.! I'd hav e to say this ride has caused me to doubt my leadership abilities. I'll have to work on that. More about that later (on my web pages).