Peggy, Steve, Ken, and Rick joined me on my 53 mile Kennedale – Briaroaks route today. We left Sonora Park around 10:00 am. It had already started to warm up by then, and within a short while, it was truly a beautiful day for riding. This is mostly a quiet, scenic route (with a few crazy drivers thrown in at the beginning and end), and the roads were great, as was the company.

The only part of the ride I didn’t enjoy too much was the downhill rough curve I tried to take too fast at mile 33. I was on my left side and skidding, instantly. It’s the first time I’ve ever gone down at speed on the Corsa, and another reminder of the need to pay attention at all times when riding. I knew this curve was rough, and had always slowed down for it before, but just didn’t think this time.

I knew I had some serious road rash on my left butt cheek, but I had no idea how much of the rear of my tights was gone. They should never have let me go in the Subway after the ride…..lol. I have road rash all the way across my rear, so I must have finished the slide on more than just my left side. The road rash on my left forearm and thumb are less severe.

We ended up with 52.3 miles, at a 14.3 mph average, and did 2,355 feet of climbing. It was my first ride of more than 25 miles since my surgery. I’ve developed consistent exercise induced asthma since the surgery. It happens whenever I ride hard. I start my chemo next Friday, and I’m betting I’m the only patient in the chemo room with road rash from a bicycle crash.

Today’s route

Can I keep it?

Fedex delivered box 1 yesterday, and box 2 today. It’s a Performer Roadster carbon fiber and aluminum lowracer. Actually, with a seat height of 15 1/2 inches, it’s too tall to really be called a lowracer. I guess quasi-lowracer would be more accurate. The seat and bottom bracket height are both over 1 1/2 inches taller than Performer’s specs show them to be. The bike is made with two different sets of wheel sizes (559 and 406 or 622 and 451), and the fact that mine has the bigger wheels may explain this discrepancy. The seat and bottom bracket are 2 1/2 inches taller than those on a Baron.

I bought mine from Steve Delaire at Rotator Recumbents. Like China Mascot, Performer builds excellent frames, but has been known to install componants that are poorly chosen, mismatched, or just plain wrong. I figured Steve rigging it would eliminate most of that, and he did a nice job. I asked him for an OC setup, and the riser and handlebars he installed work really well on the bike. The idler setup he used seems excellent, too. The only booby trap that escaped Steve’s eagle eye was the rapid rise rear derailleur paired with a Sram Rocket shifter. For those who haven’t used a rapid rise derailleur, they shift backwards from every other derailleur you’ve used. Paired with the Rocket shifter, 1 is the smallest cassette cog, 9 is the biggest. I might could get used to that except for the fact that I have the same Rocket shifter on my Corsa, and having the same shifter work backwards on one bike from the other isn’t going to work.

I did my first 25 mile test ride this afternoon. Slow speed handling on the bike is outstanding. On my first try, I did a turnaround on the narrow Joe Pool dam road, without unclipping and without sitting up. I have yet to wobble on the bike. It came with the standard heavy FRP seat that Performer and China Mascot use. The seat seems too large for me, and isn’t that comfortable. Still, even with the seat I’m not too fond of, the bike’s ride is surprisingly good. On the rough Joe Pool dam road, it was at least as good a ride as my Corsa. I have a carbon fiber seat ordered for it. I won’t be able to really fine tune everything until I receive that seat. With pedals and seat pad, the bike weighs 26 pounds (unofficial bathroom scale weight). The carbon seat should lower that by 2 pounds.

As tall as the bike is (relatively speaking), it may not be as fast on race day as I’d like. But, I can already tell it’s going to be a blast to ride.

This afternoon, starting from my driveway, I rode 9.8 miles in the neighborhood on the Nimbus, averaging a blistering 12.9 mph. Why bother blogging about such a short and slow ride, you ask? It was my first ride since losing the upper half of my left lung to surgery on December 20th. They removed 40 staples from my side yesterday, and after a few minutes trying out the stationary bike, I decided I could ride. It felt great to be back on the bike.

I’ll be going back to work on January 18th, but I’m not supposed to do any lifting until February 1st. I plan on just riding easy for a while, and not pushing it until I’m a lot further along in the healing process.

I did 41.3 miles from home on the Nimbus yesterday and 25 miles today on the Joe Pool dam on the Corsa. It looks like these will be my last rides before lung surgery, and therefore last rides of the year. I ended up with 6161 miles ridden this year.

These rides have a way of turning into epic adventures, and this one was no exception. There were six riders on this permanent brevet. We started the ride in Princeton, at 7:00 am. I got to riding along, talking to Peggy, and the next time I looked around, there was no one else behind us. The crosswinds were already pretty gusty, even early, but we made decent time to the first control, and before we were ready to leave, the rest of the group arrived.

At Ladonia (which is home to one of the friendliest Deputy Sheriffs I’ve ever met), we turned north, and had a good tailwind the rest of the way to Honey Grove, the turnaround point. Peggy said she wasn’t feeling her strongest, and I had to admit I wasn’t either, so we didn’t really try to fly down the road while we had the tailwind. We just pedaled a comfortable pace.

At the Honey Grove control, John Droese pulled in just a few minutes behind us, saying he would keep his stop short, and wanted to join us. John is new to LSR, but is a strong rider. Before we left, the rest of the group arrived, so they were still just a short distance behind us. By then, the winds had to be blowing 30 mph, and the 12 miles straight south back to Ladonia were brutal. That stretch isn’t hilly, but it’s so open it really catches the wind.

After we left the next control at mile 95, it sprinkled lightly for a few minutes, but that was all. The 6.4 mile stretch from Lane to Merit is straight against the wind, with some tough hills, and that was one of the hardest stretches I’ve ridden in a while. My legs were toast by the time we turned west again.

With 15 miles to go, my rear derailler shifting cable broke. This instantly clunked the chain into the 11 tooth gear. This gives you a 3 speed bike, and you ain’t going to like the gears you have. The 3 gears are high, higher, and highest. It had been progressively getting darker outside, and of course it chose this time to start sprinkling again. I don’t know of a quick fix for this problem (if you do, this would be a good place to post it), so, knowing the skys could open up at any minute, I decided the best approach might be to keep going, doing my best to keep enough speed to get over the hills. I can tell you that I do not recommend trying to climb a tough hill at 9 mph with a 50 cadence, especially when your legs are already fried. By picking up my speed to try and keep going, I eventually lost sight of Peggy, and of course the minute I did, she broke down.

I knew I would eventually get stopped by a hill, so John said he would go back for Peggy. Sure enough, after walking my bike up a steep hill, John and Peggy showed up, and we spent a few minutes trying to do a fix to get me in a lower gear. John pulled the cable while I pedaled to get the bike into a lower gear, then we tied the cable. It did not work. As soon as I took off, it clicked into the 11 tooth gear again. I decided to keep going. I only had to walk one more hill, but I did struggle mightily on several. The 9 mph with a 50 cadence seemed to be my limit. If I fell below that, I had to stop. But, I sat right on the 50 cadence on several hills, my legs boiling in hot oil.

After my cable troubles started, I was so intent on just getting in that I neglected to keep drinking my carb drink, and I paid the price for that. As soon as I pulled in the parking lot, I bonked, and could hardly stand. A few minutes of sitting in my truck downing sugar made me feel much better (thanks for the Herseys chocolate, Peggy), but my legs were so fried, they looked like this:

Well, maybe they didn’t look like that, but they FELT that way. I ended up finishing in ~10 hours. Mileage was 125.6. On the bike time was 8:21, for a 15.0 average. Total climbing was 3958 feet. The wind made it feel like more.

Rose and I arrived at the Arlington Bicycles Inc about 12:15. My new tandem carrier setup worked perfectly; I think this setup would be fine on the highway if I want to make a longer haul with the tandem. The ride start time was 1:00 pm, so we took time to explore the new Bicycles Inc store. It is really big and well stocked. The ride signup sheets were inside the store, and there was also all kinds of fruit to snack on.

We enjoyed the route. The main change on the short route is the return, which comes back on Turner-Warnell then Calender, rather than a long haul down Sublett, which gets pretty busy in the afternoon. It still makes a longer run down Rendon Road than I like, but the traffic this time of afternoon was much less than the after church traffic we caught last time, and the short route doesn’t stay on Rendon Road nearly as far as we did on the LSR ride.

I never got an official count, but it looked to be 50 riders or so, in all. There were a half dozen or so tandems, and there looked to be plenty of newer riders. We started out at the back of the pack, not having done any of these group rides on our tandem, and not sure how well we would keep up. But, we soon found the speed at the back too slow, and started passing folks. We soon ended up with a group which included some slower riders from the 60 mile route, and the fastest of the 37 mile riders.

We rode out against a howling south wind. The clouds kept the temperature mild, though. This is great weather for November! The break at the Rendon Store at mile 20 was very welcome. The more upright seating of this tandem isn’t as comfortable as my other bikes, and 25 miles or so is all I usually do on it.

With the big tailwind behind us on the return, we kept up with the fastest riders on the short route, except for the usual getting dropped on hills. We ended up with 37.2 miles, with an on the bike average of 15.5 mph. I guess having a pace set for us by riding with this group speeded us up some; we don’t usually manage that fast an average on the tandem.

There was pumpkin pie waiting at Bicycles Inc after the ride, but we settled for more fruit, and headed home for dinner. We both enjoyed the ride; I’ll think we’ll do this one some more during the winter. A 1:00 pm starting time like it has will be good when the temperatures get cooler.

I had an excellent day, riding this 200k brevet. Steve, Peggy, and Ray are great company, and it was so nice to be doing the ride with a pack of recumbents who’s uphill and downhill speed characteristics match my own. This ride starts in Italy, goes southeast to Groesbeck, then takes a more westerly loop back to Italy.

As I loaded my bike onto the rack this morning, I noticed how cool it was, and turned around and grabbed my arm and leg warmers, and tossed them into the truck. That was a good move. In Italy, the temperature was 57 degrees this morning, with a stiff south wind, and even after I put the arm and leg warmers on, I was still shivering. It’s hard to believe it made it up to 91 degrees in the afternoon, and with a big time tail wind, it was downright hot the last bunch of miles.

Within a few miles from the start, the four of us settled into a group by ourselves. We passed Nelson. He was doing the 300k, and conserving energy with a modest pace at that point. The southwest wind, which had been blowing at 10 mph or so when we started, kept picking up, and shortly after we turned west on SH-31 at mile 24, it really started blowing. The eleven miles down SH-14, from Mexia to Groesbeck, mile 52 to 63, were just brutal, against a wind that was really howling by then. Everyone arrived at Groesbeck tired.

But most of the miles after that were with the wind, and we really started moving down the road. At the last control stop, mile 93 at Mount Calm, Ray decided to wait for his friend, Dennis, who had had a blowout and another flat, so Steve, Peggy, and I took off by ourselves from there. We had started the ride with intentions of keeping our pace moderate, since it was Steve and Peggy’s first 200k, and I’ve tended to crater myself lately, when I try to hammer too many miles. For most of the ride we did a good job. We would get the pace a bit fast, then catch ourselves, and slow a little. At this point, however, we just kind of took off. There were a few miles west, against a quartering wind which really slowed us down, but once we turned north on FM-308 at mile 101, we really cranked it up.

After we turned onto US-77 in Milford at mile 125, we made a quick stop at an outdoor pop machine, wanting a rejuvenating soft drink for the last few miles, but the machine was out of order, so we just rested a few minutes, and continued on. I can’t believe how strong Steve and Peggy still were as we pulled into the finish! Congrats on your first 200k, you two, that was a great effort!

We finished with 132.2 miles, and a time of 9:30. Average speed was 16.6 mph, for an on the bike time of just under 8 hours. This ride was just too much fun; I look forward to more brevets with these bent riders!