12 LSR riders left southwest Arlington at 6:30 am this morning to ride my Peachy Keene 200k permanent. Paul and I were the only two recumbents. The weather radar looked very threatening before the ride, with rain all over the place to the west, moving this direction. I usually skip rides when there is this much rain around, but considering the heat we’ve been having, I decided to take a chance today. I thought that if we could get far enough south soon enough, we could miss most of the rain, and that maybe it would be gone by the time we traveled back north.
It was sprinkling rain as we left the first control, and continued much of the first 25 miles. At one point, the pavement was starting to look wet enough to get slick, but we never got a hard rain, and the roads remained in good shape. After we left the second control at Cleburne, the wind, which had been pretty light to that point, started blowing from the southwest, and slowly picked up, as it kept changing more to the west.
Mark M rode off the front of the group quite a bit, but the rest of us pretty much stayed together until after the Itasca control at mile 65. As usual, I was off the back on a number of hills, but caught back up pretty quickly. The route heads up Orphan Hill right after Itasca, though, and as usual, I fell back quite a ways on that hill. I caught up with most of the group a mile or so later, but noticed that Paul and Gary G were missing from the group, so I knew they were off the front. So, just like I had good sense, I took off around the group and hammered the rest of the way on the mostly downhill roads to the next control at Maypearl at mile 81. I ended up catching Gary just before the control, but didn’t quite catch Paul.
The next stretch, from Maypearl to Alvarado, is always tough for me, if I’m trying to keep up with a group of uprights. It’s not big hills, but it’s quite a bit of elevation gain on mostly false flats. And by this time, the wind had switched to the north, and picked up quite a bit, and this is where the ride turns back north. It was quickly obvious that Paul, who hadn’t done a 200k yet this year, was hitting the wall. That fast stretch to Maypearl had finished him off. So, we let the group go, and settled in on an easier pace. We made a quick unscheduled stop before the next control at Alvarado, and another one before the finish.
The humidity was high, and the north wind slowed us quite a bit on this last stretch, but with lots of clouds around, it was a cooler breeze than I’ve felt lately, so we didn’t complain much about the wind. I ended up with 124.4 miles, and we finished in just over 9:30, and joined the rest of the group for dinner at the Sweet Tomato restaurant. Like many of these summer rides, it got tough at the end, but was a fun day.
The graph below shows the elevation profile for Peachy Keene. The second highest point of the ride is the top of Orphan Hill at mile 70, then the lowest point is the Maypearl control at mile 81. That’s why I was able to come from a half mile behind everyone to pass everyone except Paul and Gary on that stretch.
You can also see that the next 20 miles from Maypearl at mile 81 to Alvarado at mile 101 is a lot of elevation gain, even though there aren’t any big hills. It’s not a fun stretch if you’re going against a wind and just blew yourself up on the last stretch.
Gary was riding a 200k for the third day in a row, and still had the strength to chase Paul downhill all the way from Orphan Hill to Maypearl on an upright. There are some strong riders in LSR.
Peachy Keene route
