Epic ride?

What defines an Epic Ride? Stupid long distance? Overcoming mechanical difficulties? Getting lost? Bonking? Torrential downpours? Bridges out, with unknown detours?? Yea, that sounds about right.

A couple of weeks ago I found in my email a fun sounding training ride, called "The Laurel Ridge Pain Fest." I've been itching to try it out ever sice I read about it. Looked to be around 120 miles from my house, topping out at Laurel Mountain, and then heading back. The plan was to head out around 8, and hopefully beat the weather. It seemed like a good idea at the time anyways.

Managed to get on the road at about 10:30, and made it into Greensburg before my first near-life experience. Just before crossing route 30, on the other side of town, a van cuts me off while he was taking the off ramp to get onto 30, which I happened to be blocking, since I was traveling straight on route 130, but whatever. I guess he was pissed because maybe he thought that all traffic should be going his way?? Oh well, he slid, I slid, and I lived to tell about it, although I was really pissed for a while. Shortly thereafter, we came to the first detour. We could have possibly made it through the construction, but maybe the detour would be nice. Oops, now we're on route 30. Oh well, guess we'll just follow this for a bit. Ended up not being too bad. I never realized how much of a shoulder there is on it. Find the turn for the detour, and then it was time for the big "rollers."

Back on the route, had a couple of mean climbs, with some fun downhills afterwards. Found another bridge out, but this one was easy to get over, just had to jump a couple of jersey barriers. This is about when we started noticing the big dark clouds off to our right. Huh. That can't be good. When the rain did start, it actually felt really good. In the middle of another endless climb, trying to concentrate on getting to the top, thinking, "well, at least there's no lightning." CRACK. Ok, now there's lightning. Finally get to the top of this climb, then downhill with no brakes, pop out in a really cool little field, and the sun decided to rejoin us. Awesome.

Finally make it to Linn Run, refill bottles from the spring, and make the decision to abandon the rest of the route, and try to figure out the quickest way back, as it was starting to get late. Decide to take Route 30 the whole way back to Greensburg. Wasn't a terrible ride, and after a quick flat change made it almost home before getting caught in another quick downpour, sans lightning.

Ended up with 114 miles on the day, not a bad little endurance training ride. Hoping to do one a bit bigger than that next week, to prepare for the Shenandoah 100 in a couple of weeks. Also looking forward to the Pittsburgh Roubaix, in just a hair under 12 hours now.

If only I could get out of this work crap tonight, I could be racing the mountain bike tomorrow. Unfortunately, not this weekend.