THE MORNING RUSH HOUR

M,W,F of every week, some of the engineering guys from Zipp meet for an early morning ride before work. This week’s blog is an example of a typical morning ride that I termed, “The morning RUSH hour”.

4:10 AM – BEEP…BEEP…BEEP…The alarm rudely awakens me from a peaceful sleep. It seems like my head just hit the pillow 10 minutes ago. Arrrgh!

4:20 AM – After checking the weather report and radar on the internet, I grab my gear that I laid out the night before, get dressed, grab a banana to eat, fill the water bottle up and head out the door.

4:25 AM – Making sure bike and gear are in the car, I back out of the driveway and make the 15 minute drive up to the starting point.

4:50 AM – Arrive at the start point. Michael shows up at the same time. Good. I won’t be riding alone today.

4:59 AM – Andy rolls down the driveway. With headlights on and tail lights blinking, we are all ready to roll.

5:01 AM - As we are about to leave Andy’s subdivision, another headlight appears. It’s Todd riding in from his home, a short distance away. At that point, I noticed all of us, except Andy, are riding FPs. Michael has FP 40s, Todd and I are riding FP 60s, while Andy comes along with Zipp 808s.

5:30 AM – We are only 8 miles into the ride at this point. Indiana is not know for its steep terrain, but there are a few hills and rollers that will get the heart rate up and make one sweat. Having only been somewhat awake for only 90 minutes, my legs are screaming to keep up with the others. 20 extra lbs. is nice on a descent, but carrying them up the other side of a hill is another matter. We finally reach Lafayette road which parallels I-65 on the northwest side of Indy. Our average is around 16 mph.

5:45 AM – Once on Lafayette, the pace quickens even though it’s still a climb out of the valley. The road seems to flatten out, but according to the elevation charts we are still ascending. Our pace on the smooth pavement boosted the average close to 19 mph. We cross over I-65 and parallel it on the other side. This part of the route flattens out and we can really stretch our legs. Our wheels are really humming at this point. What a sweet sound they make! We barely catch our breaths as we make the right hander onto the road that leads to Whitestown.

6:00 AM – We arrive in Whitestown. We’re at 20 miles and our average is the same, 20 mph. The road into town is flat, so sometimes it’s a hammerfest. Some mornings we sometimes run into some of the guys from sales and it’s a parade of bike lights into town. Very cool! Not today, though. No other riders seem to be found.

6:30 AM – Almost back to the start. The sun is beginning to shine on the horizon. The terrain starts to become hilly again as we descend back down from the top of a plateau. There are some descents at this portion of the route that you really can fly, but the small rollers are steep enough to scrub off much of that speed as you ascend back up the other side. By the time we return to the start, our average drops back down to 19.5 mph. It’s still a pretty good average time for this 40 yr. old.

6:38 AM – Arrive back to Andy’s house. We debrief our run and go our separate ways. Total time 1:38:15. Total miles 31.54. Avg. 19.5 mph.

7:10 AM – I arrive back home, clean-up, pack lunch, eat a quick breakfast and head to work.