Achievement unlocked, day 2, RTCC

Date	August 30, 2020
Time	09:43:16
Duration	05:15:59
Distance	105.86 km
Average Speed	20.1 km/h

I’ll paint a picture for you. Imagine waking up in bed on a Sunday morning and hearing sudden, intense gusts of winds buffetting your house. The light level is a bit low and you realize it’s because it might be pretty cloudy outside. Leaning over, you grab your phone and check the weather: part cloud, 8C, and westerly 40 kph winds gusting to 60.

These are normally the kinds of days where I would take an extra rest day.

But, see, here’s the problem: I signed up for the Strava 100k August challenge. And I really wanted to do a full 100k ride for the Ride to Conquer Cancer. And so it was that, after much waffling, I found myself on the road, buffetted by winds I’ve never before faced, attempting a distance I’d never before done.

And I gotta admit: it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I thought!

Obviously it was long. My average pace, here, was just 20 kph, well under my normal target. But I was smart and chose a new route that lead to headwinds for the first half of the ride and tail winds for most of the rest.

I won’t lie, physically it was extremely demanding. My knees were very sore by the end of the ride and continued to be so for the next couple of days. But overall, I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected. And as a bonus, finally tackled a route Strava had been suggesting to me for a while, and for good reason, as the roads west of the city really are very nice!