I'm bummed to say I think my Garmin didn't save today's ride which is a real bummer, but I'm trying to figure it out.
This year has been really challenging for me and my bike. I've gone through a lot of incredibly hard rides and getting pretty toasted on rides with really good riders. In racing, I saw myself progress and get stronger but I felt increasingly discouraged.
Today I remembered, however, that Tour DaVita is not about that. I started at the back of the group - letting almost everyone go ahead of me. Today, though I had planned on this day being about others accidentally ended up being a day that helped me.
Though I rode through almost all the riders, reminding them to move over right and use their shifting up the hills - something else happened - all the hard hours I'd spent trashing myself, in over my head, made me an even stronger rider. I kept up with people on hills who used to drop me. In fact, I was half way decent at climbing. A friend of mine whom I'd ridden with a lot last year (not just at Tour, but also in Denver) said to me "when did you learn how to climb?!" It was great to hear and reminder that all my work this year didn't leave me empty handed.
So while I had planned to spend this day riding and helping others - I ended up having a day of Tour DaVita that ended up helping me look at my difficult training year with a lot of perspective.
That said, I also got to teach people how to do a rotating paceline and push people up hills. Then I turned around once during the ride and once after I finished my ride to sweep people in - so it wasn't entirely selfish.
Day 1
80 miles + ~5.5
5h 15 min + change
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