Hotter’n Hell? Nope. Hot as? Probably.

Couldn’t find a good enough reason to trek to Wichita Falls for the annual roasting of 10,000 plus cyclists, but I did manage to find a century from my usual Saturday morning group ride.

Wow. Slower moving speed, but a new PR overall time of 7 hours 35 minutes makes me pretty happy.

Thanks to Todd and Beth (not her real name) for a fantastic day on fantastic roads touring the countryside.

Unlike the last few century attempts, nothing exciting happened and my bike didn’t break (a good thing). This is probably in no small part due to my propping replacement parts against said bike. That’s gotta be intimidating. I also installed a slime liner inside the rear tire since I was determined to not flat. So far, so good.

I ate well throughout the ride with a nice mix of Shot Bloks, Snickers bars, granola bars and about 1 swallow of Gatorade. Water consumption was over 150 ounces during the ride, 24 ounces pre-ride (plus a cup of coffee).

We rode with the group up to the break point in Prosper, splitting off to continue up to Celina before looping through Mustang and on to Pilot Point to refill water bottles at the 45 mile mark.

We stopped briefly in Weston – nice park bench. Beth (not her real name) borrowed some air conditioning and some (apparently) not very tasty water from the community center. Fortunately, drinking the water was not required, but it was a nice shower when we hit the light at 380 & Lake Forest.

At the parking lot, I was at 91.5 miles, so I followed Todd toward his house, turning back at Mission Ridge & Park, just as the very fickle storm that had been trying to form decided to blow VERY hard. I managed to sustain nearly 17 mph into a pretty good headwind… Not bad for a very tired (and sunburned… oops…) me at the 96 mile mark. I swung through a neighborhood just before Legacy to make sure I was safe on miles, stuck the bike on the truck, and headed for home, just catching a few raindrops on the way.

Now to head to the church of chili cheeseburger and partake… Gotta do something to replace those calories, right? Time to rehydrate so I can relax and enjoy the M&M recovery ride tomorrow.