The good news was, the rain that was thundering down at 6:00 AM had cleared out by 8:00. And the frickin' 90 degree/98% humidity weather from earlier this week had blown away in the face of Hurricane Arthur. I was left with a beautiful sunny day at about 68 degrees to start. The downside was that the winds had stuck around - I was facing 24 MPH winds out of the NNW for the ride.
The other annoying thing was that I'd left my 910xt on after Friday's ride, so it was all out of juice, and I wasn't going to have any feedback on how I was doing at any given moment on the ride. And I have to admit I freaked out a bit about how I was going to be able to record my ride for Garmin Connect - after all, if it doesn't make it up to Connect it doesn't count (right?). Happily, it occurred to me that I could load the MapMyRide app to my iPhone and use that to at least get a GPS track for my ride. Not quite as good as my usual data, but it gave me SOMETHING I could look at.
So...after fueling up on coffee, a sausage and an egg on toast, and some Nutella and almond butter (also on toast), I loaded up 4 bottles with Gatorade, dropped 6 gels in my UofA jersey pocket, and headed out.
I figured I'd take a run out and back up through Maine - Route 9 to Route 4 to Route 5 and back again. Seemed like it should be reasonably flat(ish), and I expected that by sticking to major routes I'd be riding on pretty good roads. And that's pretty much directly into the wind for the "out" leg, so I expected to struggle outbound but to be able to reap some benefit from my work on the way home. Most of that seemed to work out pretty well for most of the ride. The ride out 9 to North Berwick is a little rough, but I ride that all the time, so I know where the crappy bits are. I was able to keep a nice steady rhythm most of the way, and got to the junction with Route 4 without incident. In retrospect that segment runs largely east, which made that chunk of the ride pretty relaxed as the wind kept quartering around to push on my shoulder or back.
Running north out of North Berwick through Sanford and Alford towards Waterboro also went pretty well. I lucked out with the wind as it was blowing largely on my shoulder and I was able to take advantage of the nice road to keep a solid pace through the next 21 miles to the intersection with Route 5. I hit (what turned out to be) 28 miles at just about the 1:30 mark, which seemed fine for an LSB kind of effort. I have to admit that I was a bit confused at this point. I thought going into it that the way that I went was the continuation of Route 4, which I've been given to understand is a pretty good cycling road. Turns out I went up Route 5 instead, which is in no way a good cycling road. In fact, the 8 miles I rode (16 out-and-back) were pretty much an unmitigated stretch of crap. The pavement looked like alligator skin, except where it was so badly broken up that it looked like long stretches of dirt with bits of pavement scattered across it. Add the fact that this was a long up-hill stretch, and that the wind finally started pushing in my face and I was feeling pretty miserable for the half an hour I spent running up this chunk of road. The only bit I liked was that I found a port-o-let at the public boat launch on Little Ossipee Pond, which eased my mind considerably (considering that I'd been thinking about finding a private tree since roughly immediately after leaving the house...). I turned around at Waycross Road in Limerick (just after hitting 2 hours on my old chronograph) and began the long slog home.
Running back down Route 5 was *slightly* more fun that running up it was. Wind at my back and downhill was awesome. Hitting long stretches of badly broken pavement at 25 MPH was slightly less awesome. As fabulously engineered as my Nathan Designs AP Pro Hydration System is, the cap still vibrated off the fill hole, and I ended up getting sprayed with probably 4 ounces of Gatorade out of the 16 that were in the bottle at the time.
Given the amount of time I spent swerving away from the broken shoulder, I have to admit I'm surprised none of the drivers of the trucks and SUVs that seem to be de rigueur in ME were in any way rude to me as I made my way back to civilized riding territory.
I've never been happier to get off of a road than I was to leave Route 5 behind and get southbound on Route 4. Getting back to North Berwick and the junction with Route 9 was largely an exercise in maintaining cadence and letting the winds push me up what hills there were. Nothing particularly interesting, not counting the growing layer of dirt sticking to all the Gatorade I'd sprayed on myself over the course of the ride.
Turning back onto Route 9 to get back to Somersworth quickly became a genuine suffer-fest though. Not that there's really anything that's at all challenging on the chunk of road. But it is pretty consistently hilly, and a net uphill from North Berwick to Somersworth. And remember how the outbound leg had the wind quartering around to push on my shoulder or back? Well, the wind intensity had picked up a lot, and the direction had stayed the same, so I spent the last 7 miles of the ride running directly into a pretty stiff headwind. By the time I made it home I was more or less ready to be done (and, frankly, was feeling like it would be pretty much OK if I didn't ever ride the damn bike again...).
I was finally I able to check the MapMyRide app to see how I'd done. Imagine my disappointment when I saw that I'd only gotten through 72 miles in all that time. I *guess* that averaging over 18 mph over that distance in that wind is ok, but I really wanted to get over 75. However, I did get a solid 4 hours of time in the saddle (well, OK, 3:57...), and I felt like I kept a high cadence and low effort level throughout, so I'll go ahead and give myself credit for a solid LSB workout.
It may be that the best test of how I'd managed the ride was that evening's 35 minute recovery run. While the first half mile or so felt pretty rough, the remaining 3 miles were actually pretty enjoyable, and I was able to maintain a 9:30 pace despite keeping my average HR down to 138.
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