150 words about 103 miles
It was like the usual group ride, but with new riders on a route I’d forgotten. It had been raining, that light rain that leaves puddles in the asphalt swales and leaves you wondering how much of the stream coming off the wheel ahead of you is pasture runoff and how much of it is just rain, and why the puddles look kind of foamy. Apropos of nothing, the guy next to me says “last climb,” but I know it isn’t the last climb, and I think he knows it’s not the last climb, but he says it, I think, because even unnecessarily reassuring me gives him an edge, half a wheel, or so he thinks, except there are no “last hills;” no hill is the last hill, because every climb, every pitch, every roller, every hill is the first hill of the rest of your ride.