Praire Dog Century fun

Last Saturday (Sept 22nd) was the 5th century for the Indian Crossing Century series. As I missed the August Century in Millstadt this was my 4th for the Century series and will do the makup century ride in October.
The ride was in St. Paul Missouri, north of St. Peters and not too easy to find in the dark. We all managed to get there and prep for the ride. I had signed up ahead of time which makes in processing much faster then the previous century bike rides.

So the start of the ride was later due to a later sun rise and someone was late.... Anyway the first loop (am route) was fairly hilly and we even meandered over to Wright City, MO where I was just a week ago for the Innsbook Triathlon. I stayed in the small group for the first 30 miles and then I decided to accelerate and push myself a bit on the last half of the mourning ride. I was able to manage a 19.1 mph/avg for the mourning ride. Unfortunately, I wasn't the first rider to finish as I saw other rider leaving to start the afternoon ride. I punched in (the card keeps track of your total time) and sat down to eat from the tasty buffet served in the Knights of Columbus hall. The food was great, lots of bread, ham, turkey and peanut butter and jelly served in small plastic cups!

The lunch was short (about 15 minutes ) as I wanted to finish the ride before the weather heated up and head winds started. The two loops for the course, one for the morning and afternoon intersected so some bikers would be from the morning loop not the afternoon loop. This made it imperative that you watched the road so as not too miss any arrows for any turns. Well, it turns out as I battled two bikers on the pm loop I missed a turn and ended up back at the start. I decided to restart the second loop again and after 20 miles saw where I missed my turn. I was already at 90 miles so I decided to bike back to the start and call it a day. After six hours on the bike I was tired, my legs were in pain and so was the rest of my body! I did a total of 95 miles which was close enough. I learned not to race through the course as I might miss a turn and get lost of even bike more miles! (which never happens!)


Till the next Bike Century....


Red Horse


Brett