Sept. 2 rides

[emily_in_nc]

I climbed passo dello Stelvio - I did that with 5000 other bikers - 1800 meters pure climb over 25 km. 3 hours of unadulterated suffering.

Wow, I am in awe.

Great photos - thanks for posting them.

Congratulations! You truly are an alpine rabbit. I guess that makes me a yep, hill slug.

Emily

[uk elephant]

So Saturday morning I headed off on my long solo ride adventure that BF and my dad were so worried about. First stop was the bike shop. Friday some idiot professor stepped into the road right in front of me and got himself tangled up in my front wheel. Luckily there seemed to be no serious damage neither to me or my bike (nor to him for that matter although it was his fault). The only thing I could find was that the wheels were slightly buckled which worried me. So I stopped at the bike shop and they assured me the bike was perfectly safe to ride and not to worry. And they scheduled me in to get the wheels trued on Thursday. I called the guy who caused the crash and he was happy to pay for the repairs. So feeling relieved and ready for some pedalling I headed off. The weather forecast was for pouring rain all day. Turned out to be light drizzle in the morning, then dry most of the day. Not enough to get me wet or cold. But the strong headwinds all afternoon got me somewhat frustrated. But I kept pedalling away. I figured as long as I kept moving forward, I was still making progress and I was in no hurry. By the time I got to the hotel dad had booked I had done 55 miles in 7 hours (including the stop at the bike shope, so really it was 6 and a half hours). I was a bit disappointed that it wasn't longer because I had mentally prepared for a 60 mile ride so I considered making a few laps of the town where the hotel was to get up to a metric century, but decided a hot shower and a bit of stretching was more tempting. It is still 15 miles more than I have ever done in one day before so I figured I could be proud enough of that acheivement.