Ride From Hell!

Ride from hell...

Everything hurts! I haven't been able to move from my bed since yesterday!

As I said last time I checked in, I wanted to buy a gravel bike... and I did! Bought a specialized Elite E5, $1650! It's a beauty!

Already went out with it 5 times. Started at 30Km and been increasing the distance since the first ride, but this last ride... was a mistake!

I normally ride on the road, me and my friends set a course and go to different towns around mine, but this time, we decided to ride a new freshly built gravel track. Basically, my town converted a train track to a gravel track. On the website, it says the track is 30Km, but that information is wrong!

In the beginning, everything was fine. I had a full bottle of water and nothing was hurting, I got to the 10 Km mark and everything was still fine... 20Km, still fine! But once we got to the supposed 30Km we checked the map and the halfway town was still 10Km away! This might not seem much, but the issue is that we still had the whole track back. The distance was not 30Km it was 41Km!

By the 30Km mark my back was hurting, I had already drunk my full bottle of water. The old guy who came with us was starting to hyperventilate from back pain every single time we stopped, and we weren't even halfway! We still had 10 more Kilometers, and another 40Km back, the end was still so far away!

We pushed through the pain and kept cycling, the only thing in my mind was that the town probably had food and water that I could use to refuel my legs.

We finally arrived! Oh god, finally! We stopped by a gas station that had a few chairs outside. We entered and there were a couple of cyclist girls in the corner. We said hi, walked to the counter and we bought a bunch of foods and drinks! Finally, we could refuel!

1 Liter of water and 2 sandwiches, just for me! I had to refuel... I think I never tasted sandwiches that good! Or maybe they tasted so good because I was starving!

We were there for around 20 minutes, resting, and talking, we allowed our minds a few minutes of rest. But in the back of our minds, we knew... we knew that we still had the whole way back!

The girls there were there before us left first... they are going to be important later down the story.

We finally decided that it was time to go back! We still had another 40Km to come back to our town! We hopped on our bikes and started going back.

At first, everything was fine, those sweet sweet minutes of rest had allowed us to reenergize our storages. But, after 10-20Km of cycling back, all the back pain, leg pain, tiredness, and soreness was back!

And now, the worst... remember those girls that were in the gas station? Well... they stopped and we cycled past them, and so began the worst part of the ride!

If we cycled past them, we couldn't allow them to cycle past us, right? A group of guys and our male egos!? Hell no! We had to arrive in our town before they did! And I'm telling you, those girls were cyclists! We just begun this sport. They were pros in it, with full tactical cycling gear!

Every single time we stopped to catch a breath, we rested for around 5 minutes before we looked back and started seeing those girls. Every single time one of my friends started saying "We need to go! Now" Oh god! Here we go again!

10Km started feeling like 20Km! Every single time we stopped, I checked the GPS and we had made almost no progress!

I'm telling you... by the end of the ride I was hyperventilating like I was giving birth! Breathing through the nose, exhaling through the mouth. Focusing on my breath, everything was hurting, but we needed to arrive before they did!

In the end, we won! We won our imaginary male ego-fueled race! But at what cost... I've been lying down in bed since yesterday, only getting up to eat, drink or go to the bathroom! I woke up 3 times this night, with what felt like a fever...

We won... but at what cost...

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Aerobics, Cycling