Stacking Miles.

This coming Friday the family and I are headed back down to Sanibel, FL for Spring Break.  We've been there several times but not for a few years now.  The kids are super excited but I was a bit meh about it.  I was hoping to do the Landrun 100 in Oklahoma next Saturday.  Maybe next year!
I thought about bringing my bike so I could ride a few times while we were there.  I was really close to doing so but changed my mind last week not to.  The traffic in Sanibel (an island) is a bit nuts and even taking the bridge over to Fort Myers only dumps me into a bigger city.  I'm sure I could have made it work but in the end I decided I ride more than enough at home and this should be about hanging with the family.  Also, being the nut that I am, I know I would obsess about if I should ride or not!

With the decision not to bring my bike I decided to make last week a "big" ride week and as much as possible this week, although it's pretty busy.  Starting the week off with a sick kids and then 3" of snow I wasn't off to a good start.  As the week progressed so did my riding with the weekend seeing the bulk of it.

Saturday the kids were with their grandma down in the cities and Jen was at a Knowledge Bowl meet.  I left the house at 9 to get some riding in.  Because it was already so windy I flipped my Garmin to the map page, hiding my speed.  I did parts of the Dirt Bag start, eventually splitting off and continuing further SE, into the wind.  At no particular time I made a turn West and meandered around with really no agenda or plan.  When I checked on my ride time I was shocked to see over 4 hours.  Time to head for home.  Sweet, sweet tailwind.  But because it was a super strong (20+) wind out of the SE and the roads were running north/south I never really had a direct push home.  I ended with 107 miles and 6 hours 40 minutes.

Sunday a group (Charlie, Matt V., and both Andersons) met at my house and headed out at 9.  This time the wind was more directly South but already strong.  We had talked of going to Darwin, home of the biggest ball of twine, but decided to do the most current Dirt Bag route as it twists and turns so we wouldn't be fighting a headwind for a solid 3-4 hours but rather split it up.  Despite really liking riding solo it was great to have others to chat with and take turns upfront battling the wind.  Man was in windy again!  We ended with exactly 100 miles in 5 hours 44 minutes.  I was super stoked how my legs felt considering it's early spring.

For the week I got 24 hours 17 minutes and almost 400 miles.  Stacking miles!  This week I'll try and ride as much as I can but it will be tricky.  Tonight we have two kids doing two separate things at the same time, so no riding today.  I will try for tomorrow but 50 mph gusts are predicted, yuck.  Go with the flow.  Off to the gym.