Fulton Il to Shabbona State Park 88.5 miles

This will be a short post as I am beat on my butt after riding 88.5 miles in the rain and wind and some rough roads.  It was a tough ride for lots of people today, and some people had melt downs because we had to put on an extra 3.5 miles to get into camp.  Apparently the original route took us into the end of the park that was all gravel for a distance.  It was decided to take us to the other entrance which was paved, but was another 3 miles around.  When one is psych out to do 85 and you want to be done the extra 3.5 miles can really affect one's mind.
I started the ride with Barb, but was having difficulty keeping up with her as my legs felt like lead and I had trouble pushing myself to 13-14mph while Barb was doing 15-16. I told her to go on which meant I was riding by myself. Just before she pulled away from me we saw a silhouette of Big Foot and thought it cool to get a pic of him.

 

 At about mile 40 Dan Kiel, Herb Boven and Nancy Nienhuisn were pulling past me and I managed to jump behind them so I could draft for a while.  What a difference it made for me.  This saved me lots of grief.  At the 4 SAG I ran into Marti Du Plessis who told me she would pull me in the rest of the way which was about 30 miles. This too made a huge difference for me as I was almost spent and do not think I could have done the ride if it had not been for Marti and Dan pulling me along at times. When I rode with Marti, Betty Adams also asked to join, but before we could get started we had to change a flat on Betty's bike. We always have more flats on rainy days.  Thank you so much Marti and Dan for helping me finish the ride. This is what is so neat about this community.  People are always helping each other out providing support and encouragement especially on really hard days.
When I got into camp I was really cold so I quickly got out of my wet clothes and put on sweat pants, a fleece and for the first time on tour socks and running shoes just to get warm and feel dry.  It is 61 degrees.
We are staying in a lovely state park with lots of trees.  We can have a camp fire so lots of people are sitting around it.  However there is no shelter or inside facilities so we hope it does not rain when we eat

Last night we were really treated well by the folks in Fulton with a great supper of pork, chicken, spaghetti, as much sweet corn as we wanted, salad and numerous pies with ice cream. We could have as much pie and ice cream as we wanted and some people had 2-3 pieces of pie. the people in Fulton also provided live music for us and much of it was old time country gospel and other country. It was delightful and  entertaining.  Thanks to people in Fulton we were blessed with good food and hospitality. 

 

Daily stats

 

Distance88.49 mi

Duration6h:47m:40s

Avg. Speed13.0 mph

Max. Speed27.5 mph

Calories4130 kcal

Min. Altitude572 ft

Max. Altitude1005 ft

Total Ascent907 ft

Total Descent534 ft

Thanks for all the words of encouragement and support.  I feel blessed to be part of the larger Christian community.