Herkimer, NY to Albany, NY.
78.60 miles
Before we start today I have to thank Colleen, Tim and now Tom & Joe for the blog posts they sent and Deirdre posted. Your way to kind and if your not careful you are going to get me far to emotional to finish this ride. I love you all and see you in Boston.
Well the ‘Red Roof Inn’proved to be way to close to the railway and I 90 for me and I was sat in Denny’s at 4:50 am. The bonus was that it is a 24 hour Denny’s so I could go and get an early breakfast and a lot of coffee that early. When 7:00 am finally arrived and we headed out I took the front and put the pedal down a bit. It was cold and I don’t do cold very well so I thought if I pushed the pace a bit I would at least get warm. I did warm up but I also ended up riding alone again this time at the front, Oh well.
We followed the train lines and the Mohawk Valley which also (I think) has the Erie Canal running through it. This made for a relatively flat ride for most of the morning. Eventually we did turn a little north and climbed a bit but nothing to write home about. Again today was more about your head than your legs. It is funny but now I am not trying to think of the end as I don’t want to lose focus on a really big day tomorrow and a long day on Thursday. In the early days I wanted to think about the finish so it made it feel like a shorter journey. Tomorrow we climb around 5,400 ft over 75 miles with a 16.8% (steep) hill in there somewhere so its not over yet. Yet I do think that now I am a different cyclist that left from Florida in early May and worried about climbing up to Flagstaff. Tomorrow it will be slow but steady as I have learned to do before. Embrace the climb and the pain until it’s over and the satisfaction kicks in.
Tonight I met another WM’er at the hotel, Pete Skinner. It again gives me great hope to meet another WM’er looking so fit and healthy. Pete goes kayaking and is just getting fit for a new bike so WM is not holding him back either. As I have said before, knowing that there is a small WM community out there sharing, supporting and helping each other is comforting for me now being a relative newbie to this Lymphoma thing.
Well there will be a lot more to say about the ride over the next few days when hopefully I can say I rode across America EFI. I will keep the blog going a short spell after the ride as I am sure that on reflection I will realize a lot more about what I just did. Tonight however I have to rest as tomorrow is a big day and with at least one 6.5 mile climb I am going to need some energy to finish this thing off.
Thanks to everyone for all of the support, kind words and donations. I will be pulling on all those things tomorrow to get me over this last hurdle before we can start to think of coasting into Boston on Friday.
