FEET!!: Black Earth Hilltopper (+ the best bail ever)

This weekend, Ali and I decided to have a nice, relaxed couple of days with each other. Naturally, that means that we spend the first day of the weekend on an 80+ mile bike ride! We've got the Dairyland Dare 150/200k ride coming up in early August, and while biking to frisbee games helps, it's certainly not going to be enough.

We got up way earlier than I was hoping, and hit the road as soon as we could get our lunch from the grocery store. I was dragging the first 10 miles, but we eventually got into a decent rhythm. We paused for a snack at a park in Black Earth 20 miles into the ride, and we thought we might be good to do the whole route from there. The Bombay Bike Club's ride had been relatively hilly (as advertised) by this point, but we knew it would only get worse as we continued toward Blue Mounds (home of the Horribly Hilly Hundred).
There were two pretty staunch climbs on our approach to Blue Mounds that sapped all of our energy. I was willing to be an ok sport and just keep going, but thankfully, Ali decided there was no way either of us were making it up the final climb to Blue Mounds State Park, so we took a detour over to the rail trail and had lunch.

We saw millions of cornflowers on our ride

Once we were off the original route, we chose to stay on the nice, flat Military Ridge State Trail and coast back into Madison. Of course, since we were going through Mt. Horeb anyway, we might as well stop at Stewart Lake County Park for a dip. And, ya know, since keeping to a schedule was no longer an issue, we could always duck into the Grumpy Troll for a pint and some deep fried green beans (delicious, by the way). As you can probably tell, our decision to bail on the Hilltopper was excellent. The second half of the ride was incredibly fun and well worth the 45 tough miles it took to get there.