The weekend

Got up this morning to meet some people for a 40 - 50 mile ride starting at 8 AM. Loaded up and left the house about 6:30 so I could get unloaded, snag some coffee at Amici and wait for everyone to show up. Went to check the time, and noticed my phone was dead. &^#!@. Powered it back on and notice two text pages, the first asking if anyone else was still going, and a second one at 6:38 saying that the ride was cancelled. Guess the 30 degree temp and the 17 MPH NW wind scared everyone else off. Since it was 7:45, and I had gotten up early just to go for a ride, I decide to go ahead an go, even though I really didn't want to. I had been wanting to get a longer ride on the Paramount and see how well it was going to fit.

I Left the west side Bike World, rolled out west and south to Booneville, turned around and rode north into the headwind, back into Waukee, and then cruised down University to 60th and back to Bike World. Short ride of only 20 miles, but the first 2/3 was definitely hillier than what I have been riding lately. My lungs were on fire for the first 30 minutes due to the cold air the the climbing. I really wanted to just turn around and go home, but I'm going to need to ride harder and stress my body if I want to begin to keep up with Pete, Lou and the rest of the fast guys around here. Climbing is definitely a weak spot of mine, so I need to get more into my workouts.

The ride down University was nice. Cruised along at 25 mph, with a couple of sprints to 32 to make a couple of yellow lights. The tail wind helped me out a lot on the sprints. Seat angle felt better after my adjustment last night. However, I forgot to raise the seatpost to compensate for raising the saddle nose, so I felt cramped for most of the ride. I still think that the frame is a bit smaller than I should be riding, especially in light of the fit that I had done for the Long Haul Trucker. I guess I'll need to put some more miles on over the next few weeks and then figure out what to do.