A little slower is a lot better

September 19th, 2011 Posted by Rachel. Published under Riding. 5 Comments.

We’re in Hamilton, OH now at Jessica’s parents house.  Currently, I’m enjoying the smell of cooking pizza while everyone is engrossed in a film!  After an evening of recovery last night (they live at the top of a very large hill), we’re settling in again for a few days.  The last three days of riding were very different from the previous four days ride from Chicago to Carmel, IN. And by that I mean different in a good way.

In the previous week, we rode 60 miles for three days and one day of 30.  It ended in fights and anger at each other, which I’m sure Jessica will be angry at me for sharing with you all, but there, I said it.  And hey, all y’all need to know that it isn’t all rainbows and sunshine out there.  It also meant that on that one 30 mile day we didn’t get to enjoy the short day or each other on that day.  The culmination of all this strain on ourselves is a simple solution (because we know how to work things out instead of continually fighting! YAY!).  We’re capping our days at 50 miles.  No matter what.

On our first day out, we stopped at mile 45 and Jessica asked a veterinarian if we could camp in his very large yard.  He did ask us why we were stopping so early (between 3 and 4pm), but seemed to accept our reasoning that we had gotten up early and wanted to stop early.  It was a pleasant evening, and reasonably quiet, save for his overly friendly boxer, Daisy, sniffing around.  We woke up plenty early and started off again!  My spirits were soaring because I knew, we were going to have just as short of a ride and hopefully just as nice of an evening.

Then came the head wind and the hills.  But in fact, my spirits weren’t really dampened.  Jessica’s were though.  It worked out swell for me though because she was soon convinced that we could not in fact go the remaining 60+ miles to her parents house yet that day.  Phew, I thought.  I even joked that I’d summoned the wind just for that very fact.  She was pretty miserable, but it’s hard for me to not revel in the small victory that I really, really, really like to only go 50 miles or less in a day.  40 even if the wind is mean.

And what a gem we found when we stopped too!  If anyone is looking for a nice park with a beautiful lake in Central Eastern Indiana to camp or spend time at, Whitewater Memorial State Park is the place for you.  If only we had known, we might have stopped for a few days to see more.  But we had a baseball game to get to, so no sudden delays for us!

So here we sit.  3 days of travel, 1 day of rest and no fights!  (We did have a little back and forth during the wind, but it was markedly shorter and less mean.)  Also, I’m looking ahead at our next leg and thinking my goodness, we could pretty much be in northern Florida by the end of October if we keep this pace!  So why not slow down a little and enjoy ourselves?  More rest days and less miles in a day a happy Rachel (and Jessica even if she won’t admit it aloud) make.