Another very good day. All 14 riders made it in. So far, all riders have made it in on their own power every day! 5 days down, 1 to go...

The story of the day was the WIND. It was extremely windy - and, of course, it was a headwind. Stiff headwind is BRUTAL... this was a 15MPH sustained headwind. At times, I was only going 11MPH in the flats... Unfortunately - due to timing - I battled the wind solo for about 60 miles today. Bruce was too fast... I left late and ate lunch at the 75 mile mark (later than most people), etc. Fortunately, at about 90 miles, "The Girls" from Ohio caught me... Once I hooked on, we kept a pretty good pace (17MPH) into that wind. That helped a lot.

Windy...

The Drury Inn where we are staying tonight is ALSO the registration headquarters for RAIN (the 160 mile ride we are joining tomorrow). There are 1200 people riding RAIN... walking thru the lobby, you hear conversations like "Those people over there are riding RAINSTORM - can you believe that???". Kinda cool...

HAPPY to see this :)

One other thing I learned today... if you are 462 miles into a bike ride - and the route sheet says to go on a road named "Goat" something... just ignore it. Roads named after goats are usually not flat. Today was supposed to be flatter - but the Goat road was anything but flat: 9-14% sustained grade. The hill was a mile long. You can see it in the elevation profile.

Today's stats:
100.6 miles
6 hours, 32 minutes
6152 feet of climbing
15.4 MPH average speed
129 BPM average heart rate
6,263 Calories burnt!

The route can be seen here (this shows elevation, heart rate, etc as well): Day 5 Route

Cumulative Stats (5 days):
526.06 miles
30,926 feet of climbing
32,621 Calories burnt!

Tomorrow is 160 miles... rolling out at 6:45 with 1300 riders. Should be lots of fun. Fully supported, several rest stops. Plus the Rainstorm group gets their mechanic & SAG as well!

Good Night...

-- Marcus

P.S. Tomorrow's post may be posted on Sunday morning... depending on how I feel after doing 160 tomorrow.