6/18- Pittsfield to Poughkeepsie

"Chuck Norris is the reason Waldo is hiding"

Today we crossed our first state sign, crossing into NY shortly after leaving in the morning. Unlike normal group rides where people usually sprint for town lines, our trip only bothers sprinting for state lines (well at least some of us anyway), which I think is pretty sweet. Jose easily took the sprint as he was able to make the early jump by using his Garmin 705 to tell him where the state line was. I would say that was cheating, but since I had the same information available to me (although I didn't know it), I can't really cry foul.

Total distance= 78.6 miles

Total riding time= 5 hrs 10 min

Average speed= 15.2

Average heart rate= 121 bpm

max speed= 41.8 mph

Total calories burned= 4555 calories

Today's ride was somewhat of a blast from the past. We biked past Bard College, where I had the ECCC President's meeting this fall to figure out the race calendar. We also biked into Vasser where we went for easterns 2 years ago.

After the excitement of the state sprint which was at mile 9, I kep the rest of the day fairly easy, and instead focused on riding with as many different groups as possible. While the mileage was more then we've done to date, the 80 miles passed by quickly, as there was mostly rolling hills that amounted to little over 3700 feet of climbing. However, what made the day challenging was the large number of people, myself included, were more then a little beat up after the climbing of the past two days. I never thought I'd be looking forward to getting off the bike so much for a build day tomorrow.

The ride consisted of only one major climb that I can remember now that I did several times to encourage various groups of riders to get up the climb. We wound up having to take a dirt road for about two miles in NY that included a pretty steep downhill (this is where the cyclocross skills came in handy, as I was ableto makepeoplealittle less jittery going down by coaching them to shake out their arms and keep their weight over the back wheel, etc..) The weather was mostly pleasant until we had more torrential rain for about 10 minutes in the afternoon. As much as I enjoy riding in the rain, the rain is starting to get annoying, as I've had to clean my bike and drivetrain every day except once so far this summer.

We are staying at the Oakwood School in Poughkeepsie, where I'll have a bed one of the two nights we're here. We were given money by Vassar (Chris Webber's alma matter) to buy food, so we bought Chinese food to break up the monotony of Italian pasta dinners. We were also able to get laundry done, and I was able to avoid having my chore group have to go to a laundromat.

I spoke to Katie today for a good amount of time today, which was really nice, because it's usualy pretty difficult to find any private time in our travelling circus of 32. While I'm definately having a blast here, I'm definately missing her. She seems to be doing extremely well with her new job (she has her own assistant!), although I imagine they are expecting a lot from her to give her all of these benefits. Unfortunately, she isnt able to visit on Saturday, so I'll most likely be seeing her when I return. The one benefit of this is the beard off can continue (we've slightly changed the rules so that its not how well we grow in the beard in, but who can last the longest).

We've also had other unofficial contests, such as last rider standing to go without a flat. I'm one of the few in the group to not get a flat yet (I'm fully planning on making it to Santa Barbara without a single flat). For those in the group who have had a flat (or several), some are counting how many they get.