Inaugural Thursday Team Ride

First I have to thank everyone (mainly Karen) for pushing this ride to happen, I would have punked out and rode the trainer in the a/c if she didn't make this a team event. It was so nice to be surrounded by team mates instead of fast, squirly people that I don't know and damn sure don't trust. I knew where we were going to end up climbing the 3 sisters although they had me guessing where we were going at the start, I've never linked together my route like that but what a good ride. Felt great taking my turns pulling at the start but the whole time I knew the sisters were coming, this was going to be me second time climbing them this week so I was unsure how my body was going to act once I got to climbing. I off course LOVE the downhill just before the first climb. I felt pretty good on the first two of three climbs but started to suffer on the third a little and got a change to gather myself while we did a rotating pace line before heading onto another unknown road for me, glad I was surrounded by some strong guys and gals because I was getting a little tired at this point and then I saw it, a nice long, pretty tall climb that just seemed it would never stop, ouch. I was a hurt puppy by time we got to ashland and just turned into a zombie mashing the pedals without thinking...... Just hope that it wasn't too much too close to my time trial on sunday, that I'm a little more unsure of now since I just heard that all the smoke in the air here is from a forest fire in nc that is blown even more smoke to the chesapeake area, so ya got near 100 temps, trying to put out a hard 40k effort and now breath smoke from a nearby forest fire, ack...