Where has the week gone. Well went for a ride today that I'll post about later but I really needed to finish off the post about the century ride from last week. Well I can say that up until today my legs were still feeling the pain from the long ride so hope that I have now rested up these cement pillars and return to normal until next months grueling ton.
As I was saying in the previous entry after I hit the half way mark things did get a bit hairy. I had made my way to the top of Misgav and this was going to be the furthermost I would be from home and then turn around. To my amazement I had only racked up about 40km by this stage so need to wonder around a bit or at least take a detour to make up the extra kilometers.
After stopping for a sandwich and looking at the map I decided to take the Camels Back on the way home. This would send me out of the way a bit but involved some more climbing. I knew the way and also was aware that the gradient was not silly. Making my way there though I needed to go through one of the villages. In hindsight with the situation as it was with Israel and Gaza I should have known better. Never having something happen before I pushed on and was greeted by a small group of kids who started throwing stones at me. I just kept my head down and got out of there asap.
This shook me up but I just wondered how throwing stones at a lone cyclist was going to help the situation in Gaza. The crazy thing is I'm not Israeli or Jewish so all in all I'm as far removed from this as you can get. The valley was really nice though after that before I needed to make my way up to Camels Back. There was another climb in between but I got over that fine with the adrenaline still pumping and then it was onto the climb. I had been there the day before exploring the singles we had built so felt great to be back.
This fast descent lead me into another village, this one alot bigger but I normally go in to get humus or baklava(a sweet pastry) so didn't think anything of it. It had been a band of kids in the previous village so I thought that things would be OK. Then I got to a round about and there were some teenagers and would you believe it they started throwing rocks at me. these weren't stones but rocks. Luckily their aiming was about as good as their mentality and I got out of there safely but I was pretty shocked from the days experience. The fact of putting in 100km on dirt is quite enough without having to dodge the mob.
By the the time I got into the fields near home my legs were starting to hurt. I was forced off the bike in one case by a severe cramp in the hamstring. It felt like I had a soccer ball inside my legs and I just couldn't loosen the bugger out. I eventually got back on the bike and slowed down the pace for the last 20km. I had made a arithmetic mistake and though I had ten to go but then realized that it was double that. So I will not be doing any calculus after a hard day on the saddle that's for sure.
The last bit pretty much flew by and with the help of the iPod I was kept sain for the entirety of the ride. I'm already planning the next route but trying to find something less hilly is proving difficult. I may just make it a multiday ton where I'll do the century the first day out and then make sure I'm close enough to home for an easy spin back the next day.
