Day 3- Riverside to Indio, CA ------click here for pics
85 miles
5:09 minutes
3,517 feet of climbing (lots of debate with this number)
average heart rate-133 bpm, 4,500 calories burned
Todays Events-We saw it all today. No need to go any further. Have you ever encountered a homeless man with 500 lbs of stuff and in the middle of the desert. He was pushing a big rolling trash can he borrowed from Waste Management or somewhere. This guy was in the middle of nowhere. Not even a house for 5 miles. When asked where he was going, he simply said north. My biggest regret of the day was not getting a picture.
We started out the day with a 3.0 mile climb. The terrain leveled out and we passed a lot of farms. Good to see the other side of California. We rode to the 28 mile point where we did a 5 mile climb to Beaumont, California-elevation 2,680 feet (I think). After Beaumont you enter the desert. Then began one of the most fun rides I have ever experienced. We rode downhill and downwind to Palm Springs. From Beaumont this is about a 25 mile ride. We dropped down almost to sea level. Wow! Where we ever flying. We passed two Mexicans in a lowrider on Route 111 (Just kidding). We average over 25 mph for this segment. Exhilirating! Had to walk our bikes through a construction site and noticed 18 Mexicans working and two white guys watching them. Hmmm, now I understand why they take their stance on immigration.
Once we reached Palm Springs the temperature started to rise and we encountered a headwind. There were three of us together in a paceline. This is where the bikes are following in a close line with the rear tire of one bike and the front tire of the next bike about 2 feet apart. This reduces drag with the following riders working about 35% less than the lead rider. We almost always ride in a paceline. A lot of the other riders don’t really do that. It takes some practice and you have to confidence in the other riders or you will have a major pile-up. We arrived at Indio at around 1:30 and stayed at an Indio hotel owned by an Indian. Just a little too much irony there. I noticed that the quality of our hotels has gotten worse each day. Maybe they think we are getting so tired we won’t notice. We haven’t.
It was 101 degrees when we rolled into Indio. Tracy our group leader said that today was an easy day. That has me a little worried. We lost two riders today. One with a broken hip and his spouse. Almost lost another permanently, but I won’t cover that here.
Tomorrow is 100 plus miles and we are in the Mojave Desert. We can only start at 7:15 and are starting the day with a big pancake breakfast. Not too big as we’d like because we have an 11 mile climb starting first thing. Many of the 26 riders are taking a ride up the road a bit before starting out. They don’t care about EFI (every fantastic inch), but it is the safe thing to do. Our little group is hoping to finish around 2:00 p.m. tomorrow which means we need to average about 17 mph and only rest a total of 30 minutes or so. It will be a tough day, but the day after is 115 miles in the desert following by a brutalclimbing day. A persons body starts to adapt to the stress if it gets the right nutrients. It's only day two but my legs feel good right now.I have been pampering my body, eating plenty of gels, protein shakes and zone perfect bars. I also massage my legs at night, and put biofreeze gel on them and take my vitamins and tablets to keep from getting dehydrated. It is a marathon not a race. And it’s a marathon every day. On the good side, I did get to act like a teenager today. After biking I ate a Supreme burrito, a bean burrito and capped it off with a large chocolate milk chug, which believe it or not has recovery properties-or so I’m told by our good doctor. After that I capped it off with a burger and a beer. I’ve convinced myself that the beer has recovery properties too.