Yup who do I see when I'm walking away with my goodie bag but mark lollygagging around. So we hooked up and I was just sure we were gonna burn it up and see a nice 22mph average. Boy was I sorely mistaken.
I love riding with Mark. We ride at pretty much exactly the same speed and do a good job of pushing each other's limits without getting too crazy, I think. Though I think he was much fresher at the end of the ride than i was. We let the big fast pack off the front go, and started chewing them up as those who couldn't hang dropped off.
The roads were pretty bad and not very scenic. There was a nice lake around one corner late in the day, and some guy on his porch serenading us with a trumpet, but other than that the overwhelmig majority of the ride were dogs, trailer parks, and oil wells - they even have wells on this year's shirt.
Many of the roads were fine, but there was gravel in every turn, and often in dangerous places. Traffic control was nonexistent at several dangerous intersections, and some of the roads seemed to have extra concrete bumps to rattle your teeth. There were bad stretches like that section of 508 we try to avoid when riding form Arlington to Venus.
The wind was kinda strong, with some nasty gusts. It was straight out of the south, and the majority of the route was going directly south, or was otherwise exactly perpendicular so we had either wind in our face, slowing us down, or a straight side wind, trying to pull the front wheel with the cover out of my hands.
We had some fun though. We had some steep uphills that had a downgrade leading up to them, letting us get a fast run. There was one 11% (per the garmin) that was short, but we probably crested it at over 25mph just BLASTING past the two roadies who just had a fit when Mark blew by. There was another roadie on a slight upgrade that was a long distance who sat up and stopped pedalling, intending to rest, when he saw us hot on his tail. We were by him before he could get back in the drops and rev back up. He jumped on my wheel and tried to hang with us, but he only lasted about 100 feet. There was a lot of rabbit hunting today. George (Chapman?) from the Texas Flyers blew by us riding solo and we could keep close but never caught up to him. He's a monster.
Tale of the tape, exactly as Mark:
60.3 miles
3 hours, 0 minutes 45 seconds
20.0 mph average
39.8 Max speed
Heart rate: 151BPM, 171MAX
2574 feet of climbing.
How was your HR, Mark?
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Fort Worth Cowtown Classic 100k (Read 879 times)
