DALMAC 2002
Thursday | Day One
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Clint:
Well the first day came and went. The weather was great... Clear skies and mid 70s temps. Wind was not so bad, but the route was a tad hillier then the first day last year. Nothing steep at all, but just felt like you were climbing all day. That is usually the kind of stuff we see on day 2! There was also some roads with gravel... I hate gravel!

Just like last year we have 4 main tandems in our group. All are strong and love to keep a nice tempo between 20 and 25. It's a good tempo that makes the day go by pretty quick. When we get into the hills tomorrow and more on saturday it should slow slightly, but not by much.

I felt strong today so I did some more work at the front helping the group get through intersections. When we have a nice train moving at 25mph people don't like to slow down for intersections so the group sends out a rider to check the intersection. That was my job for most of the day. It felt good to be able to help out the tandem riders as much as they were providing a nice pace for all us single riders. In the end we did the 96ish miles in abour 4 hours 50 minutes. I think that's about 20mph avg but I need to check the bike computer.

Robyn did a great job hanging with the group until we hit some hills just past Ionia after lunch. It was nice to be able to look back and see another Atkins jersey in the group as well as have some lunch with her.

Talk more tomorrow night...

Robyn:
Great day, though there were some mechanical challenges for me. I felt really strong and loved hanging out with the "Jolly Roger" group until lunch. Wonderful "train" of people - we probably had about 20-30 riders in the morning, 6 tandems in the front, going around 20-some mph. I didn't have a working bike computer up until lunch....long story, but my magnet needed to be replaced and wasn't positioned properly. A stop at a helpful bike shop fixed that (Pat and Colleen needed a new tube installed on their tandem anyway), then we all had lunch at a great restaurant in Ionia.

After lunch, there were a few hills - nothing much, just a few rollers. However, I'm not currently running very aggressive gearing, and as a result I got dropped....not so much on the uphills, but on the downhills. I topped out my max gear and couldn't descend fast enough, especially compared to the tandems (they descend faster because of the weight of two people), and I'm not a strong enough hill climber to be able to close the gap on the hills. Soo....ended up on my own for a little bit, then worked with another rider to paceline (2 of us at about 20 mph). We went for a few miles and then caught onto the tail end of some nice folks from Ohio. They kept a good pace, about 20-21 mph for a few miles.

Then...the gravel. Ugh, it was really bad. Probably a mile or two of it. Shortly after that, we were chugging along in a tight paceline, and folks moved over to the left a little bit to avoid some roadkill.....and RIGHT into a big hole. I didn't even see it, didn't know what happened at first, but the hole took out three tires altogether (two back, one front) and we lost two water bottles. That was flat number one for me. Thankfully a SAG wagon happened to be right there and they supplied a floor pump - much easier than frame pumps or CO2 cartridges.

But....my spare tube just didn't sit right. Two people worked on it, but it just wasn't meant to be....not more than fifty feet down the road, I got a pinch flat. Aaah!! That was my last tube - I had three more, but not on me. So I got a ride back to the repair truck. Thankfully the good folks from Breakaway Bicycles (Tom and Jean) had a 650c tube and valve extender. Wonderful folks. They got me on the road, but the whole ordeal probably took an hour to resolve. Then I was on my way, but of course the momentum was gone. Probably averaged about 15-16 mph for the rest of the 35 or so miles to the campsite.

Ah well. Felt strong, nonetheless, and the legs feel good. We're with a great group of people and are kicking back tonight...ready to get up early tomorrow morning and see what the next day's adventures will bring.

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