96.29 mi max 40.0 5:42.27 Avg 16.8
Woohoo!!! Tailwind again today! I was SOOOO happy to be riding today!
Steve insists that there must be song in "Owatonna to Winona" but I am not sure where it is. It kind of sounds like the beginning of "Here we come a-wassailing"...if you can think of some additional alternate lyrics, maybe we can work it into something :-)
I left camp nearly last because I was on breakfast crew. I just decided to push hard today. I knew that it would be mostly flat, and mostly on Rt 14 (again). About 3 and a half hours in, I decided that my goal would be to complete a near-century in under 6 hours...a far cry from my Falmouth experience, when I spent around 8 hours (I think) on the bike with a similar distance.
Deb was at the first rest stop, so I stopped in to talk with her. She is doing much better than last night. I think her plan is going to be to head into Madison, to get ready for an MRI tomorrow.
For 3 miles, I jumped on Dave W's train, with Laura & Eric C....2 of those 3 are very frequently first into camp. I was pretty psyched - to be drafting at 25 mph for even those 3 miles was exhilarating. At some point, I ended up with Christy, Sean, Eric C (again), and mark, at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. I don't understand yet the importance of the Mayo Clinic, although I'm sure that I'll pay attention to any references from now on. People seemed to make a pretty big deal about going past the Mayo Clinic...I thought the fountain was pretty cool. The five of us went to lunch at Subway. Then, we all went to a bike shop off route...Christy's rear wheel blew out again - she's on rear wheel #5 now! I realized that there wasn't anything I wanted or needed, and I didn't want to hold anyone back (this was a particularly fast group of riders) so I meandered back to the route on my own.
The group caught up to me at Anna's water stop...which surprised me, since I thought they would be further behind. That's when I really decided to haul it. My average in Rochester had dropped to 16.2...and in 40 miles, I brought it back up to 16.8. Coming into Winona, I even drafted behind Alice! (That's pretty amazing, because she's REALLY fast). There was quite a bit of construction coming into town, so it's good that we were a little bit behind, because that gave the staff time to chalk our route to the dorm...the first people into town were pretty much on their own. That meant that they also didn't get a cool detour through a shaded park - they all had to climb a hill.
It's kind of weird to be in a dorm tonight, knowing that we won't be staying here tomorrow. I'd almost rather set up my tent...but I've got the room to myself, so I won't complain too much!
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