The plan was to ride out to Yorba Regional to meet up with David Trang of whom I found on STRAVA and his riding group and ride the loop back to YR park then on back to Riverside. The glitch was that due to the unexpected deaths of 2 of our 3 Yorky Poms this week, I haven’t slept well from having stayed at each dogs side day and night to comfort each as the vet determined there was almost zero possibility of saving either one of them. All of our dogs were - are old in dog years but up to the point that every “check engine light” they had lit up, they were energetic, attentive and full of energy. So this morning my Garmin informed me that my “Body Battery” 🪫 was only at 80% charged and here I was taking on a 135 mile ride without a full tank of nerve energy…. That lead to me diddling around to leave space and time to read my energy from an internal feeling kind of analysis and once I finally felt that I just needed to take it easy by budgeting my energy output but oops! I needed about 1 hr 45 minutes to cruise to the meet up location in “Zone 1-2 and maybe a touch of zone 3. Then I realized instead off the hour 45 minutes I’d need to accomplish the above I had 50 minutes to get to Yorba Regional Park 26 miles away and a ton of stop lights 🚦 to cross Riverside and Corona until I would get to the bike trail… So I threw all caution and thoughts of being gingerly on the speed and power output to the wind and after just 1 mile of warm up I began to ramp up 1 Warp Factor at a time and since it was dark and almost no one around I did rather fast - look behind, look both ways - “rollees” through most of the lights to hold speed. By the time I got to Green River then the Santa Anna River Trail I rib slapped “The Dragon 🐉 “ And we slipped into warp 8+ between 25 and 40 mph the rest of the way to the meet up point. I asked David to send me a tracking link so they could roll out and I could track and chase them down and it turned out he sent an Apple or Google Maps static location link from back when before left the lot. I didn’t realized it was a static location map until I’d turned around a mile or so after Yorba Regional Park and saw no one was there! I tried to call him but it kept going to voicemail. (In his back jersey pocket) So the question became to simply follow the RWGPS map I’d modified to include from my house the meetup point and back and go catch them. And I did! About 26 miles from the park o caught over in the edge of Irvine. I thought his group might the a handful of riders… there was about 25 to 30! With a handful of them women who we setting the pace! There was one lady there that had calves so big I saw them hitting her frame mounted waterbottles on each pedal stroke! She was smooth and powerful… Lots of good riders and beautiful exotic bikes 🚴🏾🚴🏽‍♀️👀💞🦵🏾🦶🏽🫁🫀☀️😊 So David told me they were a couple miles away from their Pacific Coast Highway watering hole… I realized then that I’d blown my planned eating and drinking schedule by quite a bit in my focused chase of them afterr leaving the park way back… Quads were starting to accumulate lactic acid especially on any kind of climb beyond 2-3% ascents. So instead of pulling over and getting some carbs, water and electrolytes in my system it turned out there was a significant climb that split up the group and I was feeling rapid poser down as my musclesle glycogen and blood glucose swan dove to none! By the time I got to PCH the group was up the road and I again had to step on it whether I wanted to or it to be able too see where they turned off PCH for lunch and water. I saw non of them… So I ended up heading onwards. I stopped at the beach side restroom and water filling station they put there for cyclist and munched some the last of my loaf of French bread split, lightly warmed up, the inner sides coated with honey and Boursin fairy free garlic and herbs spread then ate one of my 2 ziplocks of white rice with cane sugar and soft tofu. Mixed a waterbottle with my Mortal Hydration electrolyte powder and drank all of that. Between cooling down, eating and drinking a whole waterbottle of electrolytes it was obvious that I didn’t have much blood flow to power up my legs, heart, lungs, brain to ride at any kind of decent speed… So I set out for the Santa Anna River Trail just putting along. Eventually the front fastest of David’s group came up from be and I jump in with them. It took a few miles for my body to process all I’d eaten and drank to make it available to support neuro-muscular work. Then it was game on! That lasted for until just about the ARTIC Bus depot then the power began to fade again. I was beginning to see the consequences of dehydration. I did manage to eat some more rice while drafting the others I was riding with. Power came back but not as strongly as before nor lasted as long. I decided to pull over after Yorba Regional park and eat more rice and drink more fluids Power would come back on then fade. I’d drink a bit and have a surge then another fade. Body Battery was at 23%! Some how the refueling and hydration efforts were topping off the body battery 🔋 on the fly but not a lot. I just concentrated on being efficient by not going into oxygen debt and spinning over pushing for more speed or to keep my 19.7 average. Made it on home… Scales confirmed the dehydration: I was down 8 lbs from this morning. Going to work on locking down my fueling and hydration timing and quantity routine for big rides.