Second Training Ride--Training Wheels Off!

Welcome back to the blog!  We're going to try and update more frequently, because at least our moms are interested and following this.

So as you probably guessed from the title, our second training ride took place this past weekend.  This ride was in North White Plains, and included a surprise tour of many southern Westchester towns.  It also included some of the worst road conditions we have ever seen, with craters masquerading as potholes, and as Meredith pointed out, "a lot of holes.  Like, actual holes."  For those of you who don't know, road bikes are NOT built for handling those types of conditions.  Road bikes like flat, smooth, well-paved, wide, well-marked roads.  This ride was the opposite of that.  Naomi's hands are still sore from gripping the brakes so hard.

There were also hills.  A lot of them.  Steep hills.  Long hills.  Some that were steep, and long.  Supposedly this is good practice for Tahoe, which was described to us as "50 miles uphill, and 50 miles downhill."  Well, it was described to Naomi as such.  Meredith apparently just found that out this very second.

Regardless, we both survived.  Meredith rode 27 miles in about 2 hours, which, for the uninitiated, is extremely fast.  Naomi rode about 20 miles in I'm-not-going-to-say how many hours.  This included only 2 crashes, which resulted in the attached picture:

Naomi will not be wearing skirts for the foreseeable future.

Unfortunately, this is the only picture to survive from the day--Meredith does keep bringing her camera but weather conditions and the splitting of groups have not been conducive to documenting the rides.  Maybe if we don't promise pictures from our next ride, you'll actually get some.  Meredith is particularly excited about the premiere of her "super-sweet" clear-lens cycling glasses this morning, which if you're all lucky, you'll see in the not-promised but to come pictures.

This weekend's ride will be back up in not-so-beautiful Fort Lee NJ; we assume that we'll be riding farther than last time, so hopefully those spin classes will prove to be worth it.  Pray for better weather for us so we can shed some of the 5 layers that have so far been necessary to bike in.  Because cycling short are so sexy.

Thanks for reading (and a special welcome to new reader and longtime supporter, Lauren Nagin!)

xo,
Meredith and Naomi