A ride with my guy

Okay, today's post title doesn't rhyme as well as yesterday's.

Anyway, I planned a 35-mile route with a stop at the Black Diamond Bakery, a local institution in the middle of nowhere. The route out there is quite hilly, and I wanted to go between 16 and 18 on flats. Well, there pretty much are no flats on the way there, so I was going 16-18 on slight inclines, and the hubby (John) wasn't too psyched about that. We were also with a guy on a recumbent bicycle - I wasn't sure he'd be able to keep up.

Well, I slowed down a bit for the hubby, and recumbent guy was faster than John anyway! So, we didn't quite average what I wanted, but my HR was higher than usual anyway - likely due to the long run yesterday, plus John and I ran all over the Microsoft campus putting up signs for his business for two hours - and yes that is a workout. In a building, up to the top floor, find the kitchen, post sign, then work our way down each floor. And no, the kitchens aren't always in a consistent place in the building, so once you find one on a floor, it might not be there on the floor below. 60 signs and two hours later, we were exhausted. But I digress...

We ate donuts and yummy things at the bakery (John even had a moche breve - oh my goodness. For those of you not in the know, "breve" means HALF AND HALF. An entire 16 ounces of HALF AND HALF. What's that, 900 calories for the darn thing? I had a sip. It was delicious), then we got our real reward: the next 8 or so miles were entirely downhill. Not steep downhill, but enough that you can fly at 26-27 mph without a lot of effort. Fun! We all stayed together on that part.

Towards the end we lost John on the last steep uphill part; apparently his blood sugar got low despite the breve and donuts and he had to stop and eat - a Clif Bar and a Luna Bar - and then when he did reach the end of the road that has the hill (we'd been waiting for about five minutes), he flew past us and to the little store nearby where he bought and chugged a Coke. Something about that hill - that was where he got low last time. Anyone out there an endurance athlete and diabetic who can give me some advice on how to help John manage his blood sugar on longer rides? (He's type 1, insulin-dependent, and on Lantus and Humalog, no pump.)

In all, though, it was fun, and John wasn't mad at me for the times I just had to ride ahead - mostly to take advantage of long shallow downhill slopes where I could get in the aeros and cruise. And oh my goodness, I had no idea a recumbent bike could go where we went and do what we did - there were a few good climbs, and yet we couldn't lose the recumbent guy if we tried! (Not that we did, but I just thought it would happen, and frankly, I think he did too.)