6-18-10 Day 1: Hudson, Ohio to Woodville, Ohio : 105 miles in 6:18 hrs: Barlow Rd west to Truxell Rd west to Akron-Penn Rd north to Rt 303 west to Rt 20 west.
Got it rolling again after a week of R&R and it felt pretty great. Had Jared ride point for me for his 67-mile segment and it really helped me conserve energy. We got going at 8 AM and floated through Peninsula and Richfield with no problem. Then came “Big Da Da between Richfield and Hinckley, a monster 17% hill climb on Rt 303. Jared pulled ahead of me and I just spun easy, trying to conserve energy for the remainder of the day. I knew from past rides that the stretch between Peninsula and Brunswick were going to be the toughest part of the next 4-5 days of riding. And couple that with the 85-degree temps today, and going mellow through the hills was definitely the way to play it.
Riding 303 through Brunswick was kind of crappy, and it had totally grown since the last time I’d ridden through there – about 10 years ago! Once through Brunswick 303 is just a nice country road out in the middle of farm country. We cruised through Valley City, Lagrange and Wakeman with a very nice southerly wind. I just echeloned on the right side of Jared’s rear wheel and conserved energy the whole time. Kind of nice to have a bud do the domestique work for you on a trip like this for sure. Once we came to the end of 303 in East Townsend and jumped on Rt 20 west, things changed. From there the road is frequented by a gazillion 18 wheelers and big time traffic with the road going dbl land. This is where my echeloning really helped as the wind just got downright nasty at times.
He did an awesome job getting us up to a solid 16 mph average as we road to the outskirts of Norwark. Then – problem. I had written Judy instructions to just go 20 west all the way through Norwalk, Bellvue and Freemont, but just outside of Norwalk 20 west departed to a freeway section where bikes weren’t allowed. We’d have to ride through town and as far west as we could go without using freeway 20. This was a fairly new stretch of road so I was kind of in a pickle as to what to do. Bad news considering that I had figured Judy to be just 5-15 min behind us based on our mileage. If she continued on freeway 20 she’d miss us completely. So Jared ended up waiting at the 20 west turnoff while I continued into town on what became Rt 61 south.
Finally, inside of Norwalk, I stopped and asked someone what the deal was with the 20 west section of freeway that was no on my map. Guy told me that it was a bypass, and that I was on old Rt 20 west, which had changed names to Rt 61 south. So I kept rolling on alone. By then temps had hit a solid 85-degrees and I was cooking. Prior to Jared hanging back, we were both about on the hypoglycemia track, and I was just craving an ice cold coke or two. Just figured that Judy would be through in a matter of minutes so I kept rolling on. Well, made it through Bellvue and still no Judy and Jared. Then I started thinking that maybe she had an accident or something grim. I mean it was an hour and still nothing.
The road was flat, the trucks were just flying by and the heat felt nearly oppressive is it just kept climbing higher. I’d gone conservative with my water but by then I was out, and the old inside of the mouth was beginning to get dry and sticky.
Now my destination for the day was Freemont, and 5 hrs into the ride I saw a sign that read: Freemont 6 miles. “Not good” I thought as I had figured Judy to be through an hour earlier. Then as if out of a movie, I heard Judy give a yell and Jared pulled the van over to the side of the road. Jared had waited 40 min for Judy at that bypass, and thing was that the freeway part just went around Norwalk and then went back to general road. He could have ridden the whole section with no problems for Judy as we were WAY ahead of her at that time.
Anyway, all intact. Judy got on the bike and we decided to ride further west than Freemont for the day since I was ahead of schedule and it was only 1:30 pm in the afternoon. The wind had slowly shifted from out of the southwest and was turning into a bit of a headwind, which hurt 85 miles into the ride. Our stretch down 20 west was very crappy, seeing that we had this freaking rumble strip in the middle of the berm which forced us into this little 2-3 foot wide section of berm to ride on. Despite the wind and the shit berm Judy did an excellent job hanging in there, especially when I had all those miles in my legs and she had sat in a car for 3 hrs.
We jammed into Woodville as a final day’s destination and immediately hit a Subway for a quickie glycogen refill. Jared had gotten the scoop on a camping area and we went there straight away – nice little place situated on an old limestone quarry with a big lake in the crater. Only problem was that there is no tenting. So Jared was good with just sleeping under the stars tonight while we sleep in hotel Dodge 1500 Van.
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