Date:
05.06.2018
Altitude:
1338.6 ft (408 m)
Distance:
109.35 mi (175.98 km)
Total
Altitude: 67368.8 ft (20534 m)
Total
Distance: 2556.07 mi (4113.61 km)
I'm
exhausted! Today was a long and and tough day. It has been my longest
day on this trip so far, distance and duration wise. But I wanted to
cover as much distance as possible, so I don't have to cover too much
distance tomorrow, on my way to Montevideo. If the distance alone
wasn't enough to tire me out on it's own, the wind had to come from
the east. The one day I'm not going westwards, the wind had to come
from the east. Still for long stretches of the route, the wind wasn't
to much of an issue, since there were trees along the way to shield
me somewhat from the wind. I was happy when I finally arrived in
Paynesville and could get of the bike and just relax for a while.
Due
to the distance I wanted to cover today, I got a really early start
and was on the road by 7 this morning. My bike was running again
smoothly, after I exchanged the chain on my bike yesterday. So I
didn't need to stop at a bike shop to get the bike checked and could
continue my route for today. After a few miles on roads through
Fergus Falls, I switched onto a nice paved bike trail and stayed on
this trail for most of the day. I left the bike trail after about
80-85 miles, when my route turned south to Paynesville. I enjoyed the
ride on the bike trail, the scenery along the way was nice, I didn't
had to worry about cars/trucks and it stayed pretty much flat the
whole time. As in the last few days I passed by many lakes on my way,
but also forest areas and farmland. Along the way I also saw quite a
few turtles, after I saw all the deer yesterday. The ride got hard
each time there was farmland along the way, because I wasn't shielded
from the wind anymore. So I preferred it, when there were trees along
the bike trail, especially later in the day when my legs started to
get tired. After about 85 miles I had to leave the bike trail and
continued on county roads down to Paynesville. Most days I would have
had finished my route for the day at that point already, but today I
still had about 25 miles left. These last 25 miles were tough and I
really needed to motivate myself to keep going. On this last part of
the day, I was surrounded by farmland, so I could feel the wind the
whole way. At least it didn't come directly from the front. Probably
about the last 10 miles were the hardest. My route switched onto a
gravel road, unfortunately the gravel wasn't compacted so that made
it really hard to keep moving. I could have done without that part of
the route, especially it coming at the end of a long day. But I made
it and was quite happy about how far I was able to go today.
Conclusion
for the day:
It's
amazing how you can push yourself to keep going, even if you thing
you have no energy left!
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