120 miles ridden – 2484 feet climbed.

I can’t say as I sat eating breakfast at 5:30 this morning that I was enthralled at the idea of cycling 120 miles. The sun wasn’t even up, my backside was still asleep, and I really wanted to go back to bed.

However it turned into a brilliant days ride. We had a light headwind for the first 50 miles but the road surface was pretty good and because I (and many others) were still half asleep, the 34 miles to the first SAG stop passed really easily. The landscapes were vast, largely green, and empty. Empty of everything except cars and bicycles. Our second SAG was in the town of Hiland where 30% of the population were out to greet us:

From this point onwards gradual climbing became gradual descending and we got a tailwind. The landscape remained largely unchanged – awesome yet as we became de-sensitised to it, a bit boring.

There were two sections of roadworks where the hard shoulder on our side of the highway was out of action so we got to cycle on the other side facing oncoming traffic travelling at 70mph. Interesting……but at least we were, for a few miles, cycling on the correct side of the road. The British and Australian riders were euphoric!

The third SAG was at 90 miles and it was great to see that the spread of the riders – fast through slow – was at that point not much more than 45 minutes. From this point there was much more bunching which proved very useful once we got into Casper where we had to follow written instructions rather than our Garmins to navigate the local cycle path network. It’s amazing how having spent 116 miles following Route 26 when we had to reason our way through 10 instructions for 3 miles to the hotel we ended up scratching our heads and getting a bit lost.

I am absolutely shattered but feel really good. 120 miles at an average speed of 16.5 mph – I can live with that. 

So now it’s time to attend to my SIFI and then go to bed. Tomorrow is a rest day and I do need to work out how to spend the day sitting on my a*se without actually sitting on my a*se – I’ve done enough of that.