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General Category >> Ride Reports >> Houston 200k
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Message started by aikigreg on Jul 18^th, 2010, 11:16pm

Title: Houston 200k
Post by aikigreg on Jul 18^th, 2010, 11:16pm

Took a mini vacation and Alexis and I drove to Houston to get away from home for a bit as well as fulfill my goal of needing a 200k ACP ride. Alexis and I went to the Space museum along with some wacky offbeat places which is our thing - re: the orange show and the car art museum. Ate at some Guy Fieri approved joints. I joined the Houston randonneurs for their 200k from Brookshire to Anderson out and back. We set out at 6pm.

I've been working hard to up my fitness ever since everybody left me in the dust during the Italy night 300k. I was much improved, hanging with Gary and Dan at some ridiculous speeds until I had to pull over for a pit stop. Never saw them again. Made some wrong turns, read the cue sheet wrong and spent a lot of time working on the bonus miles. More chipseal than I'd like, Navasota had more traffic than I like, and there were more chasing dogs snarling at you in the middle of the night, but that's all ok. In spite of at least a half hour's delay I still managed to beat my best 200k time by about an hour. I was able to keep steadier power all night until the end, when the road was rough and I slowed way down. Except for the dog sprints of course.

The course is hillier than you'd have thought. Nothing short and steep or stairsteps like we have here. All gentle slopes or long power robbing grades. 3700 feet of climbing. Thanks to incoming storms there was lots of opportunity for headwinds out and back. I wish I hadn't broken a spoke on the VK2 - I could have taken another hour off my time easily.

So I'm pretty happy. I was able to spin the pedals at good speed for a long time and was still very strong at the finish. I usually have a avg speed in the 16s but this one was over 18. I had a crazy plan to get a few hours sleep, get up, and do the Katy flatland century starting only 13 miles away. But I couldn't get to sleep until about 5, and an hour isn't enough to turn around and do another 100 in the heat. Had fun bopping around town instead.