Hilly ride Saturday

Untitled by hasyunusa at Garmin Connect - Details
I believe the above link will show you all of the excessive details of my bike ride on Saturday with the Refunds Now group, which includes the infamous Gewilli. I usually take a nice steady cruise with the RI elders on Saturdays but I was looking for a change of scenery and faces. My plan was to ride to the start of the ride but since I couldn't find my booties I lost all kinds of time and ended up driving to Providence at the last minute. Good group of 10 or so guys, some of which can climb hills a lot better'n me, which I can live with, no worries. I may have had the heaviest bike and wheels of us all- my front wheel weighs 950 grams, the bike is probably 22 or so. Gewilli on the other hand was riding helium filled Z101s. I cringed every time we hit a patch of bad surface, which is hard to miss in RI- our roads SUCK. The ride is advertised as being aggressive and hilly and I thought I was game for it but I should have known better. Holding down puke as I fight to the top of every climb is not something I really want to do until April.. I needed to be home at noon.. so after we turned onto yet another mysterious and hilly side road off of route 44, I started to back-pedal thinking about when I'd be getting back to the car. Also, my legs felt kind of thrashed and I wanted to just shut it down. I took a u-turn, waved goodbye to the group and headed back to route 44 and straight into town and to my car in Federal Hill. Home at noon, as promised. A solid 60 miles and about 300 TSS. Sunday I had dead legs and didn't even feel like doing an hour on the trainer, though I managed 20 minutes.
This morning I was at the spinal doctor's office. The mystery of why I have stabbing pains in my lower back whenever I do cross has been solved- I have a couple of torn and bulging disks at L4-L5. It has been eating into my rest because I awaken 4-5 times every night from the pain and need to change position often. This all started right after the 2009 Concord Criterium when we took a trip up to Storyland and I went on all the rides with my son. It fucked my back up pretty good. The damage was probably already there from years of carpentry and cabinet-making in the shop during my twenties, but those amusement rides suddenly amplified the pain ten-fold. Someone once told me that back pain is an indication of general weakness.. well that may be true but ruptured disks will hurt no matter how strong you are. Thanks for reading.