The ride today was great, fast and hilly but awesome. Unfortunately it started off with a bad morning, we were dressed and ready to get on the bikes at morning circle up but our PM had some harsh words for us about yesterday's ride. Apparently there were problems with spacing between pace lines in the beginning of the ride and the cyclist were accused of intentionally making a mega pace line of all the cyclists, it was not a fun situation and caused a lot of tension right before the ride. Then we find out that we have 3.5 hours to do 60 miles to make rack point. I was with Brian and Brentley, once we got on the road I told them I really wanted to make rack point and we were going to have to push about a 20+ mph pace if we wanted to do it to account for stops and turns and hills. I asked if they wanted to push for it and they were both in so we moved fast and ended up 10 miles ahead of the 2nd pace line when we were at mile 30 and got red flagged because no vans were ahead of us to mark turns. That happened twice more and on the second the next pace line caught up to us and by 48 we got red flagged and told we were being rerouted and racked down a freeway a couple miles because the bridge we are supposed to go over was out. At that point we had gotten so spaced out and the back few pace lines were too far back to allow us to keep going so they got rolling racked and dropped off with us. We rode another 9 before the freeway and after that it was a short ride to TARC where we did an arrival for the media. TARC is an organization that assists people from children to seniors, they have a large division to provide jobs for their clients thay do wood working and have a contract with USPS and they are one of 2 locations in eastern Kansas that are certified document destroyers for banks, medical records and other private documents. They also have an accessible playground in the back with a wheelchair accessible playset and toys, safe swings and a in ground trampoline. It was very cool to see their facility, while we were there we got to meet a little boy Ethan who suffered a stroke when he was born and had a hard time learning to use the left side of his body. He is now 3 and him and his family have had a lot if help from TARC and with their help Ethan is now walking running and even riding a bike with training wheels, he has an awesome bike Jersey to go with it too.
After visiting with them we headed to lodging which was set up by TARC at the Ramada Inn in downtown Topeka. We have been very lucky with all the beds and hotels recently and this place is great. The Courtyard in the middle is really nice and the pool has three waterfalls into it, very fancy.
For dinner we went to watch a few travel baseball teams play, they game was sponsored by TARC and the Topeka team helped provide our bbq dinner with the players from both teams. We also got to go out on the field while they told the fans who we were and what we were doing then Preston got to throw the first pitch, which went really high and outside but made it to the plate at least. After watching the game for a bit and hanging out with Ethan and his family we headed back to lodging.
Most of the team went straight to the pool to cool off after biking iin the sun and then sitting in the stands in the sun for the game. Trying to get to bed early tonight because we have a 5:30 am wake up to get to breakfast at TARC. I am really looking forward to the ride because we have the infamous wall the climb 5 miles in. It is a short hill from what I hear but an 18% grade so really steep. Our plan is to do it twice because we really want to ride down it too and the other side of the hill is flat so we are going to go up, ride down, then up again and continue the ride. We will see how we feel after the first climb but I think we should be able to do it.
No comments:
Post a Comment