SpringfieldCyclist.com

After supper last night, Drew and I stopped by to watch Speedwheel for a while.  It’s a crit put on each year by the Tulsa Bicycle Club in one of the host cities for Freewheel.  As far as racing goes, it was kind of interesting to see, but not very exciting, which is the nature of bike racing as a spectator sport.  It did look like there were some pretty fast riders out there who are  a lot braver than I am. 

I also solved my helmet problem last night.  Fairview had a local discount store that carried inexpensive bike helmets.  I bought one that is basically a Wally-World helmet for $20, but it will do the job until I can get something a little nicer.

As I left town this morning, we were getting weather reports of a honking big storm between us and our destination city of Alva and those among us who had internet on their phones were predicting that our paths would cross sometime during the morning.  Sure enough, at about 12 miles, this monster looking storm comes barreling down on me.  I could see it coming for miles, and got lucky that just as I turned into the gust front, several cyclists were taking shelter in a hay barn on a sheep ranch.  We hunkered down for about 20 minutes before deciding that it had passed just to the northeast of us and heading off again.  Sure enough, just a mile or so up the road, I encountered very wet roads, and throughout the remainder of the day there was a ton of standing water along the way.

 

Because of the wet roads, flat tires were in abundance today.  First, I stopped to help two boys change a tire on their Kent tandem.  It was pretty funny…neither wanted to ask for help, but it was obvious they didn’t know how to change their tire and use the CO2 inflater they had.  A little later, I gave away on of my spare tubes to a guy at a rest stop who was sitting with a flat and two bad tubes.  I’m not sure how that happened, but he was searching for the bike shop guy when I offered him one of mine.

Then, maybe fifteen minutes later, I came upon Valerie and Jimmie stopped to change a tire on Valerie’s bike.  I met her the other day in Thomas while we were waiting out the storm.  She’s a high school biology teacher, and has been involved in various outdoor activities for young adults for a while.  She was concerned that she had ruined a tire, but in my opinion, hers was plenty good, so I helped her change it, then rode with her for another 10 miles to the lunch stop.

 

After lunch, I rode with Brittany, a very strong and fast young lady who has ridden in several Freewheel’s through the years.  She didn’t look like she had the best form on the bike, but she was absolutely amazingly strong and fast.  We rode together for a while, but she eventually dropped me.

Shortly after being discarded by Brittany, I managed to hook up with a somewhat shakey pace line that I stayed with for the last dozen miles into town.  Some of the guys in it weren’t very smooth, and we didn’t manage an incredible pace (we never did catch Brittany), but it did make for an easier time into town.

Overall, I was very happy with the ride today.  I was feeling tired at the beginning, but I had enough company all day that I didn’t have time to feel sorry for myself for long.

Here’s a link to the GPS track for the day.

God bless….

TW

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This entry was posted on June 12, 2009 at 2:10 pm and is filed under bicycle, Cycling, Oklahoma Freewheel. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: bicycle, Cycling, Fitness, Oklahoma Freewheel

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