Day 1

The day started as most of my days do; awake at 5:15, but instead of making coffee I laid in bed and did 15 min of stretching. Then dressing , filling bottles, packing and in the parking lot at 6 for breakfast. PAC Tour sets up planks on 5 gal pails, making benches for us to sit at. After scarfing a bagel & a bowl of oatmeal, it was to the bathroom, then applying bag balm, and off to work! For those of you following along on Google Earth, today's route did some wiggling around on the way out of Kalispell, then took MT 83 to MT 200. Very pretty, in the forest most of the day, lots of lakes, snow capped mountains, pretty much what you'd expect of Montana. I rode with several different groups and alone. The hardest parts of the day--getting fresh road oil on my tires, leading to picking up so much crap on my tires that they wouldn't turn--I had to spend significant time repeatedly scraping them off ovet a five mile distance. A big pain in the ass (which itself was fine, BTW). The other adventure of the day were the fierce headwinds for 40-ish miles on Rt. 200, as strong as any at home. All you could do was 'live your level' and get through in a way that worked.

My goal for the day was not to exceed 70% effort, which I mostly did--just overdid it twice in 8:40 in the saddle. This is a long, demanding trip, and if you get cooked today, you're toast tomorrow. . . And likely the next day, too. Especially when you're older, recovery is critical; your body will completely rebel if you don't take care. This is where experience really helps. So I stay in my limits on the bike and concentrate on recovery from the moment I hit the hotel. A bottle of Recoverite, shower, a hot tub if there is one, 3 or 4 bottles of water over the evening, a massage, as little movement as possible, and, hopefully, a good dinner. Tonight's qualifies, at the Finn & Porter--a nice salmon, salad, a glass of red, and a cinnamon apple crisp....a la mode.

Tomorrow we get our first substantial climbs of the trip, going to Butte; another pretty long day (135 mi) before a couple of shorter ones.