43.5 miles. 16.1 mph avg (my legs were shot today...) DH and I rode about 30 miles with our hammerhead friend 'Crazy Harold' (I love the guy dearly, but the monniker is just too perfect to let go of). He was doing a recovery ride, and since my legs haven't recovered since Friday, it was a bit tough. Luckily, DH and CH (heh!) were good to me, and let me catch up when I got too far behind (I just haven't got this hill thing down yet, which sort of sucks, since I live in the mountains... )

We left Crazy Harold at his house (he had been doing 13 miles of sprints in hills before he hooked up with us - and yes, this was his recovery ride - the guy is an animal!), and then did a little more hill climbing. Tough on the unhappy legs, but survivable. (But ugh - my first experience with GU - the stuff has the consistency of snot - I've got to find another way to take on calories, because while my body responded well to the caloric intake, I could only swallow about half a packet before the gag reflex kicked in REALLY HARD Calories are good, but I don't think I'm ready for GU. Chocolate chip cookies sound So Much Better! )

The last 10 miles would have been fine, except that we got hit with a plague of flying ant things (no idea what they really are, but ugh!!! We hit a LONG cloud of them that was so dense that we were frantically trying to brush them out of our teeth/hair/clothes before they started biting us). And about 15 seconds after the flying ant things, it started raining. Not horrifically hard, but enough that the road became slick really quickly. And it kept raining for the last 10 miles (i.e. until we got back to the car). But no crashes (of course, there were no tough corners, either! )

And I was picking bugs out of my hair/clothes until I was in the shower. Ugh.

Tomorrow is a recovery day (which means that we will be sans plagues of locusts (or whatever this buggy things were). Finally.

Still trying out saddles, BTW. I kinda like the Terry zero, and I kinda like DH's old Selle Italia (sp?) Trans Am, but I'm still chafed in spots, so it's hard to tell if one is better than the other. Hopefully when I go out on Tuesday, I'll be healed enough to get a better sense of which saddle I like better. (Because despite my very feminine-shaped rumpus, I seem to do better with narrow saddles.)

Happy riding, everyone!