I was the sweep for a club ride today, last minute. My friend, who we often lead with, posted an impromptu redux of the bike rally route for this morning on Wednesday. I took a rest day yesterday, felt a little off, but seemed OK last night. Then, when I woke up, I felt like I had been hit by a truck! Oh, oh... I couldn't cancel, so I went back to sleep for awhile, since the ride starts in Concord, but that kind of made it worse. So, I had some tea, took 3 Pepto tabs, and rinsed my nose. It was about 35 when I got up, but it was predicted to rise rapidly, and it did. In fact, I was a bit warm on the ride, but taking my arm warmers off, did the trick enough to make up for having my vest on.
This is a really pretty ride that I planned with DH; the group was nice, and I am really glad I was sweeping, because I could not have kept up with the rest! There were 2-4 slower people, and they didn't start annoying me until about 5 miles from the finish, when I usually book it, and they got super slow. No incidents, and pretty good riding behavior. The only down side was it's apple picking season and one of the prettiest roads on the ride was just filled with cars going to Honey Pot Hill Orchard. I know this is a big deal to people from the city, but it gets really annoying to have these roads clogged at my favorite time of year. Thankfully, the hill is after the orchard.
The group stayed to eat lunch at Verrill Farm, where we started, but I headed home, since DH had just arrived home from a 2 week trip to Japan and China.
29 miles with about 1800 feet of climbing.