Compared to the previous two days today was largely uneventful. It was the shortest of all four days, and there were no major hills to conquer. I got lucky in that aspect, because my left knee was extremely sore from the day before. I had to get smarter about how I was riding my bike and not just power through the gears but work my way up to speed, pedaling as fast as I could in each gear before advancing to the next. Pedaling fast did not bother my knee but putting pressure on it did. I had to put forth a conscious effort to unclip my left leg when I came to a stop, so that I could then start pedaling with my right when starting back up.
Just like the other 2 days we got up extremely early so we can get our luggage and bicycles and everything sorted out before breakfast.
Breakfast was good today, but not as good as yesterday. After breakfast we got on our bikes and had a 1 mile ride just to get to the start line. We started to line up, but Matt was a little impatient so we went ahead and left about 7:15 am. A half hour before the police escort and most of the group. There were a few other writers also went out before us. The drawback was that we had to wait of course for stop lights and obey all the traffic signs instead of just breezing right through. The bonus was that we got to the water stops and lunch before the rest of the herd.
Before lunch we had some basic water stops, one downtown at the Ohio State House, it was just water and Gatorade only no food. The next water stop was only 10 miles later. That water stop only had protein bars, no fruit.
Lunch today was only 32 miles into the course, and it was much better than yesterday. It was still sandwiches but they were much better than Subway. We also had pasta and salads.
I can't count the number of bananas that I had eaten over the previous two days. But today I didn't manage to get a single one. The only stop I saw that had bananas was the very last one and I wasn't feeling up to eating.
Even though the center of Ohio is largely flat and we were traveling on back country roads We had to deal with headwinds ALL DAY LONG!! Anyone who has ever ridden a bike into the wind knows that you have to pedal harder just to maintain speed.
After lunch it was a 23 mile ride through flat country farm land with the wind in our faces the entire time. Matt was in such a rush that he left us at lunch and took off on his own. Alicia and Jennifer both got rides in SAG vehicles so it was just Ricky and I for this stretch. Thankfully Ricky is a much better rider than I am, and I was able to draft behind him most of the way. Somewhere along the way we picked up another rider who is having a tough time of it going solo, so he got in a draft position behind me. We managed to get in behind another pair of riders in draft behind them for a couple of miles until we lost them on a turn (they either slowed down or stopped). Once we got going again another pair caught up with us and began to draft. Ricky got low on his handlebars to help with a headwind and just started grinding it out. Soon the whole pack was going along at 19 miles an hour into the wind! We managed to keep that up for a few miles but it's a tough thing to do at that pace going into the wind. We still managed to push a pretty fast pace for the next few miles, and then I started to fall behind.
Eventually we made it to the next water stop, Jennifer rejoined us and as we were about to leave Michelle showed up. We hadn't seen her all day. We left breakfast before she showed up, she didn't respond to texts so we didn't even know if she was riding. We stuck around a while longer so she could take a break and then join us on the rest of the trip. Only 20 miles to go at that point.
I can't really say that anything eventful happened over the next 13 miles. I would fall behind and then manage to catch back up on a downhill. But eventually we made it to the last water stop, and only 7 more miles to go. The last 7 miles to Wittenberg University were nice, I managed to keep up and the 4 of us rolled in together sometime around 3pm.
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