When I was a kid, I hated the occasional sharing of my birthday with Father’s Day. It was my birthday. It wasn’t meant to be shared, and it especially wasn’t meant to begin with two hours on my best behavior at church in my most uncomfortable clothes and shoes.
Today I did something very different: a 90-mile ride through the counties of Fond du Lac and Green Lake on roads and rec trails I had never seen before and in the company of two gentlemen with whom I have only seldom had the pleasure to ride: Sam Tobias, Director of Fond du Lac County Park & Planning, and Derek Moran (Gryphon Velo Racing), one of my rivals during the cyclocross season. The Mascoutin Valley State Trail, the Northwestern Trail, Dike Road, and the extraordinary White River Road—5.5 miles of uninterrupted gravel goodness through the White River Marsh State Wildlife Area—were just some of the highlights on the route. Derek was aboard the gravel bike that served him well earlier this month at the Dirty Kanza; Sam and I were aboard traditional cyclocross bikes. Today’s route was crunchy by design, not a place for 700x23 tires. We still averaged 17.1 mph in 90° heat … not bad. Full disclosure: my partners would have been faster without me! But any way you slice it, this was solid training for all three of us.
I finished this week with 236 miles in 13.5 hours. That’s easily my busiest week of training so far this year, and you’d have to go back to August 2017 to find anything like it. So, next week probably will be less ambitious as measured both by miles and by time. Right now the weather forecast shows a lot of rain, plus a couple of days whose temperatures could have me reaching for the arm warmers again. I will let the weather dictate my ride plans.
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