Gettysburg Getaway

Leading up to this weekend I was very stressed out after injuring myself and having to take many days off from running. I was basically in freak out mode. But, Friday afternoon Mike and I both left work early to drive out to Gettysburg for our Fall Foliage Biking Weekend, and I was hoping that the stress would melt away. And it sure did!

Now that's some fall foliage!

We had a little hiccup on the way there when I forgot something and we had to drive all the way back home, but finally we arrived at the hotel around 8:30 pm. The arrival party had pretty much ended by the time we got there, but one thing was for sure: there definitely wasn't 30-40 people on this trip. There were 148! Big crowd! Something else of note: Mike and I were definitely the youngest people there. I would say the average age was between 50-60 years old. That said, everyone was really cool and welcoming.

Saturday morning we woke up bright and early to hit up the breakfast buffet before heading out on our ride. The trip organizer provided tons of different routes and cue sheets. There were also some group rides with a leader, but Mike and I wanted to go on our own (especially since we're not really cyclists and didn't want to lose pace with a group). We decided to do a 50-mile loop from Hanover to Gettysburg that left right from the hotel and would get us through some parts of the battlefield.

It was much colder than expected. I threw on my new Lulu pullover and it made me kind of sad, because I had really expected to break this baby out during the first really chilly run of the season. Sad face.

The ride started out through the backroads of Hanover. They were nothing special. A bunch of suburban carbon copy homes and and some gas stations. After about 5 miles though, we started going through some really nice areas.

We kept looking for the sun to come out, but those clouds never moved. If they had it might have been a few degrees warmer!

The course was mostly flat with rolling hills. A couple of them really tore me up. Mike wasn't having any problems, but not only does he bike all of the time, he has a super light road bike. Meanwhile I was trying to cruise along on a much heavier hybrid. Oh well, hopefully I got a bigger bonus calorie burn pushing that extra weight along!

We arrived in Gettysburg halfway through our loop, around the 25 mile mark. We decided to stop, stretch, and see a little of the town. It was really cute. Very historic.

We were still freezing cold and I had a million dollar idea: Hot chocolate!

Warm me up!

Pretty soon it was time to head on back to the hotel. The hot tub sounded too good to be true so I was all for biking my little heart out as fast as possible to get there.

I was really regretting not having brought gloves when I realized/remembered that my lovely Lulu pullover had a solution for that! Another reason that company is so freakin' amazing!

"Warm heart" "Cold hands"

One thing I really liked about the area we were in was that every street seemed to have a reason behind the name. When we rode down Racehorse Lane we passed a bunch of horse farms. When we were supposed to turn on Church Street we found a church on the corner. And when we turned down Stone Bridge Drive, there was a stone bridge at the end of it!

We arrived back at the hotel around 1:45 pm. I wasn't keeping track of our time, but I imagine it took us about 4 and a half hours for the ride. Probably less because we were sipping or hot chocolate for awhile. The immediate next stop for us was the hot tub and pool!

The hot tub felt soooo good. My muscles were already feeling pretty sore and the heat just melted it right away. Mmm delicious. Afterwards I tried doing a few laps in the pool. It was, um, interesting. More on swimming in tomorrow's post though...

After the pool we hit the showers and had two or so hours to kill before dinner. We decided to drive around a bit and do some strip mall shopping. I found some great deals at Dick's Sporting Goods and scored a few crops and workout tops. I love me some sales!

Dinner was at a really nice local restaurant. Our group filled up the entire place and they had a cake made. It was yummy. 

By the time we got back to the hotel we both collapsed into bed and fell asleep. We woke up at 6 am the next morning, planning to drive to Gettysburg and do the 24-mile Battlefield Auto Tour on our bikes, but A) We were sore from the day before and, more importantly, B) the temperature was reading 37 degrees! Say what!?

We decided it would be better to just drive home, get the dogs early, and hit the gym later to get in our workout. I was really sad not to bike the Battlefield during sunrise, but we just hadn't brought enough warm clothing along and it would have been miserable. 

Driving home we went through some pretty gnarly fog:

Overall it was a really fun, relaxing weekend. I got the burn I was looking for an I'm pleasantly sore today. Looking back, it would have been really hard to fit in my 20 mile run, so maybe I'm okay that I wasn't running this weekend. The whole event was really well done. It was extremely organized and everyone was super sweet. I think we'll definitely go on this trip again next fall if it works with our schedule!