50 Miles

To celebrate 13 years of marriage, I asked my hubby to ride 50 miles with me—my first 1/2 century. It's a goal I've had in the back of my head all summer and I've been training a lot to get ready. I aimed for 2-3 rides a week all around 16-20 miles with some longer "Saturdate" rides with Joseph closer to 30. It has been incredibly fun riding this summer, and with my favorite app (Strava) I can track all sorts of nerdy things about my rides. Since early July, when I started using Strava, I have ridden 497 miles, been on 26 rides, ridden for more than 35 hours, and climbed 20,325 ft in elevation...see what I mean?

Now 50 miles may not seem too hard—boy scouts whip those out like no big deal all the time! But I wanted to ride 50 miles and feel good through the whole thing. I didn't want to be pooping out during the last 10 miles or having jello legs when I needed to make it back up to my house in the foothills. And I wanted to be in the right shape to enjoy the journey with my hubby who is turning into quite the strong cyclist. So train I did.

A few weeks ago we rode Emigration with our friends the Hayes. It was a stunning fall day but with our busy families and trying to fit in a last minute double date we could only do it right at noon on a 90 degree day. It was not my finest ride (I was slow) but it was awesome to chat with Heather while we rode—the time flew by and suddenly we were done! It was 7 miles of climbing but only about 1.5 of them are steep. It was sweaty and hot but beautiful with fall in her glory up there. And of course we made time for some Ruth's Diner on the way back down :)

 

 

 the beautiful (and very fulfilling descent!)

Another date ride from our house over to Butterfield Canyon and up about 3.5 miles for some more fall colors (about a 20 mile ride altogether). There are definitely advantages to living in the country—this road is usually pretty empty during the weekdays and feels so quiet and secluded.

Heather came out to ride with me last Wednesday and we had a great time...and a minor crash! But only because I cut her off and we both lost balance—whoops! I jammed my wrist pretty hard but it healed up quickly Thursday and Friday...ice, compression, elevation, repeat. And some leftover prescription ibuprofen from Luke's birth :)

And then it was Saturday—our day to ride. My big sis had my 3 oldest for a sleepover the night before and Nanny had Luke overnight with her so we got an excellent sleep and were on our way by 8:30 in the morning.

Glorious! It was a huge success. I think we just did everything right for that ride. We ate homemade Corner Bakery cold oatmeal for breakfast and made it 20 miles before stopping at the Ranches on the way to Eagle Mountain to refill water bottles and buy another Gatorade. Then we rode just a few miles back into Saratoga Springs and had a calorie filling breakfast sandwich at McDonalds :) It seemed weird to only be about half way done at that point but I still felt great and knew the way home had a lovely, long, downhill stretch that we'd climbed earlier in the morning—and that's always fun! We took a long way home detouring around Daybreak lake to add some extra miles and then we came home—51 miles total.

The crazy thing is that after 45 miles, on a stretch Joseph and I ride all the time, I rode it faster than I ever have and Joseph got his 2nd best time. It seems silly that we hadn't done better there in the past but I was thrilled to see that 50 miles hadn't done me in and that we'd found a really good pace to maintain for the tail end of our ride. And of course Joseph was feeling fine and dandy—he rode a 100 miler about a month before so 50 felt about perfect to him.

And then it was back to our kids and a busy Saturday and living the crazy, beautiful life we have created together over the last 13 years.

We did manage to have a pretty awesome Friday night date night too with the Eberhardts, Los Hermanos, and Cougar football. The weekend as a whole was one of my favorites.