brief RAIN comments

Another RAIN is in the books. Wow.

It was my slowest RAIN yet. However, it was a day of firsts for us: Jenn's first RAIN event (mindful that when she and I met less than three years ago she hadn't been on a bike in over fifteen years), it was my first RAIN on a tandem with a "significant other" as stoker (my first RAIN event was done on the same tandem, but with Larry as the stoker), it was my first RAIN "flying formation" with another tandem (at least part of the way)...

And it was a heck of a way to celebrate my first wedding anniversary!

It didn't all go as planned, of course. One lesson learned is that each of us has to take ownership of making sure our gear is loaded into the car--in this case, Jenn's cycling shoes didn't make the trip. The only other shoes she had with her were her Vibram Five Fingers Classics, which were NOT going to work, especially on SPD pedals. After some fretting, we noticed that Nita's pedals were "dual use" models, allowing for use with street shoes. Nita loaned her Teva sandals to Jenn, we found another rider who had a pedal wrench we could borrow long enough to make the physical switch of pedals, and off we went.

I'm sure Jenn's output was reduced a bit by her not having ideal footwear. Even so, I always knew she was putting effort into the system.

Larry and Nita rode her Screamer, and logged a rolling average some mile and a half better than ours. I'm okay with that--both of them have been riding long miles more than either Jenn or I have this year. Indeed, almost all of my miles are utility miles this year, and I've had two days this year that saw me ride more than sixty miles--one of them being RAIN. Jenn's "training" for RAIN wasn't even as extensive as mine.

Our rolling average of 16.43 for the 158 miles my cyclometer recorded (Larry insists that it's 162 miles per GPS) is fine by me. We didn't crash, did not SEE any crashes (I was VERY glad to not see a repeat of last year's car-vs.-motorcycle incident), and aside from the pedal/shoe stuff had no bike problems.

Phew! I'm still tired.

Time to get on a different bike and go to the grocery store.