The headwinds didn't go away today, but somehow it ended up being a much easier stage. The temperature started in the 60's and ended in the 90's. Today's ride will not win any contests for scenic beauty. The rolling grassy plains slowly changed to cornfields and soybean fields as we got closer to Mitchell, but in general not a very exciting landscape.
Yesterday and today brought out the "wheelsuckers".......those people who try to stay in the slipstream of somebody else all day, and take either a very short turn, or no turn at all, pulling at the lead of a paceline. Definitely a breach of paceline etiquette, and behavior that is frowned upon. Early on today, I found myself in a paceline that was going more slowly than the speed I preferred, but I schlepped along, rather than trying to tackle the wind on my own.
At the second rest stop, I caught up with Michael the engineer, Franz, a crew member (the crew gets to ride every other day, so they have fresh legs......most of them are quite strong riders) and the clydesdale, now with a taped ankle. We spent the rest of the day together, averaging around 17.5 mph, pretty good against the headwind. Sometimes the wind was from the south, so we formed a sideways diagonal paceline called an echelon, like geese migrating. No wheelsuckers in this group; everybody did his fair share of pulling at the front. We got into Mitchell after 8 1/2 hours in the saddle. Somehow it seemed much easier than yesterday.
Two notable events occured today. The first was that we went over the halfway mark of the trip, near I-90. I looked west and thought of the western terminus of I-90 overlooking Puget Sound. Then I looked east and thought about the eastern terminus of this road in Boston, where I spent 8 happy years.
The second event was that we crossed the Missouri River. From the headwaters near Bozeman, it makes a giant sweep through eastern Montana and North Dakota, before heading south. I thought again of Lewis and Clark, and our own little reverse Corps of Discovery, exploring the country from west to east.
As a medical person, I'm amazed at the physiologic changes, presumably adaptive, that are going on in my body. I'm losing weight, as I expected to. I haven't weighed myself, but I suspect that I haven't weighed this little since high school. I'm also losing body fat; based on previous measurements, I'd guess that I'm currently around 10-12%. Then I've noticed that I don't get breathless any more. Even on the monster climb in the Bighorns, I wasn't really short of breath. My legs were tired, because it was like going to the gym and doing leg presses continually for 4 hours. Much of this lack of breathlessness is likely cardiovascular fitness, but I think I might be recruiting alveoli. ....Iwonder how my pulmonary function tests might have changed. Then I've noticed that my heart rate is low. I spend big portions of each day with a rate of between 80 and 100, even when going over 20 mph. It's not like I'm not working hard, so I assume either my total peripheral resistance is low, or my stroke volume has increased, or both. Finally, I'm astounded by the mental health of this group. Every morning at 6:30, while slurping oatmeal and eating bagels, hardly a negative word is heard. With all the adversity that we have had, including headwinds, tough steep climbs, extreme heat, flat tires, sore bottoms, etc, etc......I would expect that some people would be depressed. But everyone is defiantly upbeat. It doesn't make sense. The only way I can explain it is that we must all be secreting large amounts of endorphins, again as an adaptive mechanism. It would be very interesting to do a formal medical study on a transcontinental PacTour.
Tomorrow we enter Minnesota. Fine with me. I've had enough of South Dakota.
145 miles. 2000 vertical feet
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