Day one - Tour of Karnataka .
What a day! I couldn’t be happier! 150 km covered in just over 7 hours of riding…
The usual knee pain, but in all an amazing ride.
Idli and vada did not help once again… And I had to resort to energy bars to push to lunch point at 119km.
The heat almost killed me post lunch.. Hassan should be renamed HAS-ONLY-SUN. Chennai would lose hands down in heat wave comparisons.
A few things to note and a few learnings from what went wrong:
- Your pace matters. Not your comrades… If you have a match, awesome, else, ride solo…
- Random speed changes don’t work… There’s a reason “Cadence” is the undertone for cycling.
- Water, Aqua, hydrate the fuck out of your body… No water is dangerous. You have energy you cannot spend and you start sweating which is step 1 to bonking.
One thing that I noticed was my body overheating and complaining - basically revolting to pedal… Head -> water -> dunk.
Thanks to Chethan Ram for the amazing act he’s put together in the name of TOK!
If someone who picked up a cycle after 16 years 2 months ago managed 150km in 7 hours, a huge chunk of credit goes to the team…
It does work if you have a good leader….
More pain, more updates, tomorrow…
I will however leave you with a thought:
To overcome pain, you need to learn to enjoy it…
That’s like saying you want front row seats to a showdown between your butt and your seat refreed by a sponge wearing Spandex.