I was SO looking forward to today's ride to the beach on the tandem with our tandem buddies. We were SO going to kick butt! Dh has gotten so strong in the past few months, and I've gotten stronger since the last time we rode with our tandem friends.

Everything was going well until the first hill. Hills have become my husband's specialty on his single. He's much stronger at them than his buddy who was on the other tandem. However, we were so weak on every hill we hit. In fact, about 20 miles into the ride, we were both commenting on how dead we felt. The next 10 miles or so were fairly tough for me as I was lacking energy, the "hoo ha" was hurting, the backs of my thighs were feeling weird (I think I need to try other saddles) and my muscles just didn't want to push any more.

We took a good 10 minute break and it helped. A little later we found ourselves drafting with a group of guys, which helped with the energy level and made the ride more exciting. We were passing people like crazy the farther we got to the beach. The bike trail was full of all sorts of interesting folks.

When we 1st got to the beach, we had gone 54 miles from our house. It took us 2:49 minutes of actual riding. We conitnued on the beach path through the circus of beach people celebrating 4th of July. It was overcast and cool. We forgot they had a 5k & 10k run there every year (which we've done before), plus a parade, so it was even more craziness everywhere. Kind of exciting, but made it hard to get to and even figure out where they had parked the truck the night before. I was so ready to get off the bike and was emotionally spent. Therefore, when I heard the words, "Oo! A tandem!" and was slammed with a water balloon ... I was SOOOOO not happy about it. I found myself in misery for the next 30 minutes as we finally found the truck, loaded the bikes and headed to lunch. My entire front side was soaked and I was now cold and wet with nothing to change into (that won't happen again). To add to it all, I was PMS-ing, so I kept finding myself crying over the ridiculousness of it all!

Luckily, Dh offered me a t-shirt he had and it was big enough for me to take off my wet bra and not be obvious. We ended up at a Mexican Restaurant sitting outside, away from the beach where it was actually sunny, which was perfect. I warmed up in the sun and hid from anyone who thought I might look ridiculous.