Cap To Cap

This morning we did the Capitol to Capitol Century to raise money for the Capitol Trail, a 50 mile trail from Jamestown to Richmond. With 1000 riders signed up, coming from either Richmond to Jamestown and back or Jamestown to Richmond and back this event was jammed slammed with cyclists.

We originally were going to have J, Cliff, my friend Paul, and me. Soon we added team mate Mark Pye, then Tom Doyle and a friend of his. Within a few miles we were picking up passengers right and left, and it wasnt long before we had a train of about 20 riders. Leaving the 25 mile stop the next hazard is a bridge on RT 5, that is steel grate. However, there is a concrete area down the middle. Two of our passengers wouldnt listen to me telling everyone that they needed to be on that concrete strip, and just about crashed the line going over the bridge.

There is a reason why I like knowing who we are riding with. There are an awful lot of strong riders out there, unfortunately, not an awful lot of smart ones. Getting into Jamestown one of the two bridge guys did a "bowling for dollars" deal, and as the line came to a stop tried to come up the middle of the pack to get to the front. Hey, I understand, riding in the front of the line is easier, but knocking down all the pins is just not cool when you are on a bike ride.

It helps to have such strong people on my team around. It was very cool, still wet, and for some reason, I couldn't make myself drink. 100 miles and one bottle of fluid and 3 Red Bulls is a bad thing. Now I remember why I hate Red Bull. As a caffeine free girl, they did real bad things to my system, and I was burping the last 25 miles in. I also had a sugar spike like you wouldnt believe.

Thats ok, 100 miles, 20 mph, in just over 5 hours including the rest stops. (Thanks J for killing everyone else off!) Add on to that 3 bottles of champagne for the first century of the year between 5 people and you have some happy campers. If I can actually get up and make dinner, 2 more will be happy. You can only eat so much trail mix in a day...

The only down note of the day? Our foundling dog, Snoop Dawg was gone when we got home. Cliff was suspecting that his owner saw him, and probably snuck over and took him. Wouldnt be such a bad thing if Snoop had actually been cared for before. I've never seen such an amazing transformation in a dog as good ole Snoop had in the weeks that he was here. From a sad, starving dog with open wounds everywhere to a happy, smiling guy whose new coat was starting to come in all glistening white. I'm gonna miss Snoop, from being found on the side of the road, to a member of our family, he had an awful good time while he was here.