Rosedale Ride

Phew. The Rosedale Ride. Just thinking back on it makes me tired. 

This was another charity ride like Pedal through the Pines and the money went to The Rosedale School which is AISD's only school for students with multiple disabilities. There were routes of 23, 42, and 62 miles. I did the 62 mile one in order to increase my mileage for the MS 150 and it was the farthest I'd ever gone! But it was definitely a struggle.

The route was pretty flat and it was a beautiful, warm, sunny day... perfect conditions for a ride, you would think! And the first 30 miles really were great. Lots of pretty country side!

A cute new friend at the rest stop!

A cool graveyard!

A little church!

The wind, however, wasn't going to let me off that easily. As soon as we turned around and headed into the 25 mph wind, the ride became a serious struggle.

The wind was so bad that it would literally push me and I'd have to course correct to avoid getting blown over. 

I usually ride about 15mph and I can get up to 20-25mph on flat roads, but on this ride, full speed was 9 mph!! I was crawling! And the ride ended up taking me 6 hours... it was a very grueling experience.

At the second to last rest stop, about 46 miles, I noticed my front tire was really really low. I pumped it up as much as I could with my hand pump and made it to the last rest stop at mile 51. But when I tried to pump it up again, the tire blew out. I was tired and hungry and so sick of the wind and I really didn't feel like changing a tire... 

But I did it pretty easily which was a cool success. It took me a while to learn how to change a flat. There was one winter break that I spent two hours trying to change a flat, got completely covered in grease, and was never able to actually change it.. So it was nice to be able to change it in 5 minutes this time. 

I finally struggled to the finish line and was very happy to get off my bike and out of the ridiculous wind!

I had the chance to talk to some people on Team Tacodeli about the Rosedale Ride and I was glad to hear that everyone else had a hard time as well. When someone brought up the Rosedale Ride, everyone groaned and talked about how horrible it was. Let's hope the MS 150 won't be this windy!! Or at least the wind be at our backs..

Skylar and I celebrated with margaritas and then I promptly fell asleep on the couch. When Skylar tried to move me to my bed, I said "But I have to bike there!" 

At least I got a cool t-shirt out of it (pictured above) and theoretically I'm now a stronger cyclist...