Festive 1120

I am writing this as a submission to the Rapha Festive 500 - Ride to Redemption. Not necessarialiy because it was the point behind all the bike riding over the my vacation, but more because I had already completed the task, and thought that I might as well go ahead and chronicle the adventure. Unfortunately, I missed out on pictures for most of it, so words will have to do.

You can check out the premise here Festive 500. The idea is to ride 500 kilometres (310) miles from Dec 23 to Dec 31. While I achieved said 500 km in the allotted time. (398 miles) I had my own little or I guess big adventure over the holidays. We will call it the festive 1120 (doesn't quite have the same ring to it).

Anyway as I mentioned before I hadn't planned on writing about this so don't have a ton of good stories, but will lay out the highlights.

Saturday Dec 17 - First ride back in Tulsa. I had packed just about everything I own with the full intentions of riding my bike no matter how cold it was. To my surprise, and a welcome surprise at that, I was welcomed home with 60 degrees and sun. It was the first I had seen of those two together since September.  A nice 50 miler with Raton to shake off the jet lag, and work on the tan.

Sunday Dec 18 - Cyclocross. Seriously somebody should have told me how bad of an idea this was before I tried it. It was a day of firsts for sure.

First time riding a cross bike (or mtb for that matter)

First time racing cross

First time riding mtb pedals and shoes

First time trying to dismount and mount a moving bicycle (I emphasize TRYING)

And finally, first time crashing a cross bike (this first can be repeated for the next 6 crashes too).

Would like to thank Raton Parmain and Tanner Culbreath for lending me gear, and Ryan Gabriel for the crash course (pun intended).

If anyone has a picture of my endo down the hill please send it to me, I am sure it was pretty impressive.

Wednesday Dec 21 - Here is where things started to hurt. It was pretty much 4 hour + rides other than rest days from here on out. And since I hadn't riden that long in at least 2 months it was a bit of a shock to the system. So much so that as I stretched out the ride with some bonus night time River Trail time, I got dropped by a super charged Scott Rose. I was all hopped up on Egg Nog and butterhorns so I don't feel so bad. Went to the new Blue Rose afterwards. I highly recommend the club sandwich, and if you are in the need for some entertainment, they have karaoke night. All I can say is WOW!!

Tuesday Dec 27 - Gravel Roads. Tanner had been posting invites to rides all week, but they were always advertised as 'Gravel Road Ride', and I consistently passed as gravel roads and an aluminium frame didn't seem like a good idea. This specific ride however, had no mention of gravel and I was in. Let me just say that a little omission might as well had been full on false advertising. I guess it wasn't so bad after all, hell the gravel roads were probably smoother than Wekiwa.

Sunday Jan 1 - Payback. In general every ride in Tulsa was better than could have been imagined, eventually ending in the 70s. No arm or leg warmers, seemed so foreign.

So getting back to the UK, was I guess a dose of reality. It was raining on Saturday so I stayed inside and rode the trainer and played Wii. I contend that I am the worlds best Mario Cart cyclist. I challenge anyone to a game at 180 watts. Anyway, Sunday weather.com said that it was supposed to be sunny and 56, with only a 20% chance of precipitation until after 4 in the afternoon. I guess my first mistake was to even plan on getting up early on New Year's Day, so missed the group by an hour and a half but should have still been ok to beat the 4 o'clock rain. Well the sun never came, and my hill repeats were super uninspired. Its crazy to be riding back roads in Oklahoma one day, and a couple days later, riding the Olympic Road Race circuit I thought that the worst was behind me at this point and headed back to London. Little did I know the worst was to come. What started as a drizzle soon turned into a full on rain storm. Not just a London shower, but a full on Oklahoma downpour. It was an hour and a half in pouring down rain before I finally got home. Probably 20lbs heavier as all of the winter gear I had set out with, became soaked. I guess that only made the workout harder. The only, and I mean only positive of the rain was that the road grime that had come up off of the damp roads for the first 3 hours of the day was washed away by the deluge.

At the end of the day, close to 700 miles over 16 days. Now its time for a nap and a couple cold frosties. Until the next Rapha adventure, Happy New Year, and Happy Riding.