Hey everyone it’s Blake
Today we had a rather early wake up at 5:15 which put everyone in a cranky mood including myself but the urge to eat breakfast made the guys have the urgency to pack up and get riding. We started off with a cold breeze which made the first part of the ride sort of unpleasant but we moved quickly to get to Burgestown, in which we stopped to get breakfast at McDonald’s. It was 18 miles away from our camp . We had our food and everyone filled up their water bottles for the day and we moved swiftly and continued with our day.
As we transitioned back onto the trail we had a slight downhill decline which made the 8 miles we had to get to Boyd Rd very exciting which led us to the rest of the ride. Directly after, we got onto Boyd Rd and we were slammed with a massive hill which seemed to never end and because it was almost halfway into the ride we exerted much energy to get to the peak, but our group conferred and agreed that the descent was quite epic. We had a small ride to the next section of the day which was to pass over Stuebenville and according to our route had many steep elevation climbs.
We stopped at a gas station before we started our climbs so that everyone could fuel up and after another fast stop we started biking again. The first climb we came across was not only on a highway but was long and steep but luckily there was a shady area at the top that we took a break in.
The group leaders made calls to different towns to see the availability of the camping options for the night and others had snacks and got ready for the rest of the climbs. As we continued our ride we were immediately hit with another hill on a crowded road in which we had to merge a few times but everyone made it to the top and immense relief was distributed among the group. With every uphill comes a downhill and as we descended we picked up quite a bit of speed and at some points we were going up to 41 mph but at speeds that high turns are easy to miss and unfortunately that’s exactly what happened.
We turned onto another big hill which twisted around all sides and took almost all of my energy and from there on the ride would be a struggle. We made our way onto the highway and with all the ups and downs made the ride quite difficult we stayed on the highway for about 7 miles and got off and had lunch at a small gas station which seemed to fix the energy deficit of the guys and especially myself. We had 18 miles left and everyone was eager to get going so that we could just pound out the remaining mileage.
The next 18 we had rolling hills which didn’t seem terrible compared to the other hills we completed today.
Next we got onto a paved trail that was very nice and was a great way to finish the ride. Evan and Sean got a beautiful place in a open park which everyone is very thankful for. Overall the day was quite hard but in the end, these kinds of days looking back over what you achieved gives you the energy to push forward.
Until next time…Blake