Since no one wanted to do the Cow Creek ride, I decided to ride the FWBA Peaster Pedal Backwards ride today. The FWBA tends to do hillier rides west of Fort Worth on Saturdays, then flatter, closer to home routes on Sundays. I ride more of the recumbent friendly Sunday rides. These rides are usually slower, since many of the riders are doing recovery after hammering in the hills the day before, and I’m usually in the lead group. I do like to do a Saturday FWBA ride now and then, just as a check of my progress against the club’s real hammerheads, on a hilly route.

This ride started at the Peaster School in Peaster, Texas, which is about 10 miles north of Weatherford. Sure enough, the ride had lots of hills. The 64.6 mile route which I rode had 2700 feet of climbing, but it honestly didn’t feel like that much. I think that’s partly because my weekly trips up Texas Plume are helping my climbing, and partly because the hills on this route just aren’t really long or really steep. My gps showed no grades greater than 8 percent, and there just weren’t any hills that were long like the Muenster ride hills, in spite of the fact that the view from the northern edge of this ride very much reminded me of the countryside in the Muenster ride.

I started the ride with intentions of seeing how well I could hang with the lead group of hammerheads, but that plan came to an abrupt halt just 8 miles into the ride when my chain broke. Then I stopped to help another guy who had flatted, then he flatted again, and the end result was that it turned into more of a conversational ride. My mph average for the ride was 16.0.

I really enjoyed this route. Most of the roads were just super low traffic country roads, with much better pavement than I expected. There were a couple of stretches of narrow highway with more traffic than I liked, and one stretch of rough chipseal, but I really would like to ride this route again. It’s really pretty countryside, and the weather was really nice for the start, but of course it was a bit hot by the end.

There was cold watermelon, lemonade, and cookies served afterward. This FWBA group is always friendly, and I had the usual comments and questions from those who hadn’t seen my bike up close before. It was a fun ride, and not a bad recumbent route, for those who might want to ride it the next time FWBA does this route.