Back From Corpus
Well, it was an interesting ride to say the least. It was a great ride for me and the group from Britton’s Bicycle Shop. At one point, I lead the whole ride on Saturday. That was a great feeling to be leading 3000 riders. Getting to that point was very interesting though. There were a lot of riders that didn’t make the first 15 miles. We heard of a wreck that took out at least 30 riders in the first 10 miles. At mile 15 I was about 2 bikes away from getting caught up in a wreck that took out 2 of my friends from another team. There were 2 riders that were riding like they were winning the TDF. Rider 234 and 235 were complete idiots and caused 2 wrecks themselves.
We ended up riding the 95 miles in 5:05 with an average speed of 18.7 mph. My HR was 145/161. The rough roads made the speed a little slower than usual. After 50 miles bumpy roads really make your butt numb! Out pace line was incredibly, we were flying on the first day. Definitely the highlight for me was leading the entire thing for about 15 miles.
I felt really good after the ride. I decided to run a little bit to loosen up. I ran 4 miles and was surprised because I averaged an 8:02 pace. My Hr was 162/170 so I was really working.
Sunday was a little different; we were able to get up front, away from the idiots. We were literally the 10 or 11th riders to leave in the morning. Again, there were more wrecks, this time they were behind us!
The roads day 2 were a thousand times better than Saturday. They were smooth and fast. We got into our pace line and just hammered away. We went into the first rest stop with a line over 50 riders. We pulled off and looked back and it looked like we were pulling a locomotive. It was amazing how many people we had in our line. I was pulling for a while and got yelled at by some idiot 3 bikes back because I was pulling to long ….. I still can’t figure that out. I yelled back at him to get out of the pace line if he couldn’t keep up.
We did the 2nd 60 miles in 2:03 with an average speed of 20.2 mph. My Hr was relatively low for that speed, 117/137.
Overall it was a good ride for me and my group; in general the ride was so so. There were major intersections with no police support to stop traffic, mis-marked routes etc…. A lot of little the things that could have made it a really dangerous ride. I think better ride management would have made things a lot safer. Riding on a narrow shoulder with a rumble strip shoulder and 3000 bikes isn’t very safe.