The Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde Ride

The early starting Thursday New Albany ride set an attendance record with Dennis, Jeff S, Cindy, SuperDave and Nathan all gathering with the wind howling from the west.  The plan was to ride hard and fast straight out 161 before turning back into what we hoped was diminished wind.  It worked perfectly except it didn't seem like the wind slackened at all.  Oh, Nathan forget a pair of cycling tights but Cindy had a pair of pantyhose and Nate was happy to wear that instead.

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We headed out old 161 with SuperDave putting in a super pull of 2 miles.  Then, Dennis took over in the long, slightly uphill slog, hammering away with a steadily increasing speed that had us touching 30mph.  After 2 miles of this I began frantically hoping he would tire soon but no, he kept it going for 3 miles, all the way out to 310.  This was my fifth day in a row of riding or running and my legs were toast so when it was my turn to pull it was thankfully on the mostly glorious downhill, downwind sections with speeds barely out of the low 20'smph.  After 2 miles of this nonsense, I turned things over to Cindy and maybe during her 1 mile pull we reached 35mph, finally slowing at York Road just south of Alexandria.  Our average at that point was 24.4 and you may be wondering where Jeff was during this outward run.  We were holding him in reserve.   We headed south on York with Jeff at the front and soon, he had several gasping with the combination of crosswind and speed.  We worked our way through the super rollers and emerged at Hollow Road for the turn directly into the wind.  We had gone 4 miles since turning out of the comfort of the down wind and our average had dropped 4 mph.
 
During the ensuing miles, only two of us took pulls, Jeff and yes, me. 
Dennis = 0 pulls. 
Dave = 0 pulls.
Cindy = you can guess the pattern by now.
Recumbent Dude = who cares since when he pulls it doesn't count.  It would be hard to say which of us took the longest pull but Jeff took one and I took one and that's all that matters. It was brutal at the front and even at the rear it was no day at the beach.  We discovered Mark Vonderhar somewhere out there, having gone off solo from a park on Clarks State Road.  We convinced him he didn't want to face the wind alone so he joined in.  We eventually finished just as the sun was hitting the horizon with 29 miles and a 19.3 average.

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