Last big ride for the year

At the beginning of the year I set a goal for myself to ride to each of our parents' houses from Sioux Falls. Mitchell was easy as Sioux Falls/Mitchell was the first scheduled day of the Tour de Kota. Yankton finally happened in July and again in August since we just happened to be headed that way anyway.

That only left Prairie Hill Farm where my folks live, south of Hartley, IA. I anticipated it being the longest ride of the three and probably the most difficult to schedule because it would take the bulk of the day and a quick turnaround for home that night wouldn't give us any time to visit. It also usually is a route with the most amount of headwind. I decided to schedule a vacation day on Friday for the ride and stay through Saturday night with the fam.

Thankfully, the ride itself proved a bit more friendly than I'd hoped with temps in the 80's. Definitely more hills than any of the other rides, but they were mostly in the first twenty miles. The wind, which had been probably 10-30 mph out of the southeast on Thursday (which would have been a headwind the entire way) shifted and lost a little intensity so that I was probably riding in twenty mph winds out of the south/southwest. This meant I still had stretches where I had to fight it, but the headwind sections probably averaged out at about three or four miles with the longest being six miles.

I made stops in Rock Rapids, George, Sheldon (my hometown, for lunch) and Primghar, taking my time resting and refueling as much as I could without dragging the ride out too long. The only bad stretch I had was from about Archer to Primghar (about eight miles) where I just sort of hit the wall. I realized right before Primghar that I hadn't taken my Sport Legs supplements when I stopped for lunch like I had intended. Sport Legs are supposed to help stave off the production of lactic acid so that you feel fresher longer and I definitely think they help. I've said on a couple of occasions that if they are a placebo, then they're a placebo I'll continue to take.

I got my second wind and finished strong, rolling into the farm after 3:00 where the folks were sitting on the deck outside the studio waiting in the pleasant warmth and breeze of the afternoon. We sat on the deck until Dad had to go to an art show opening that he had a few pieces in, at which point I headed into the house and cleaned up. Amy and the kids arrived sometime after 5:00 and we had a good visit. We actually slept in on Saturday, had a lazy day with the family and gigantic buffalo steaks for dinner.

Schedules when school is in session make it almost impossible to do any real riding, so I'll be amazed if I can scrape together even a handful of 30-40 mile rides until next spring, but I was happy to have a good ride and achieve a goal that seemed doable with a little work at the beginning of the year.