Tour de Fun 50K ride

The beauty of Facebook is that it makes it easy to be peer-pressured into an event.  A few weeks ago this happened for the Tour de Fun bike ride.  A friend posted a picture after packet pickup for the ride and showed how cute the event t-shirt was.

The FB post that captured me and had me deciding to ride 12 hours before it started! 

That proceeded to getting pulled in to join on the ride with two friends.  I made it to the race site nice and early for registration and got signed up.  I got my number situated onto the back of my jersey and then proceeded to get my bike set up for the ride.

The 50K ride started at 6:45 and just before the start I found my two friends.  The start is in downtown Rogers and there are brick cobbles which always make me nervous.  We got started with a wave to Janet's husband who was taking photographs for the event.

Here we go! Wearing my International kit to support the start of World Cup! 

The first mile of the ride is pretty much downhill with little pedaling required so you aren't really warmed up when you hit the hills into Prairie Creek.  The girls and I separated slightly on the hills so I was looking for a spot to pull over and regroup when I spotted a $20 bill lying on the ground.  The money was near a drive thru ATM machine so I pulled through and picked up the bill.  What a find! The girls passed me so I hollared that I would catch up with them shortly.

Biking across the HWY 12 bridge

We continued on the curving hills and enjoyed cycling across the HWY 12 bridge over Beaver Lake.  It was a gorgeous morning and the lake was beautiful.  We hit the 50K turn and knew we had about 5 miles to go until our turnaround point.  My friend Jeff Spencer came up along side me during this section and so we pedaled and chatted for a few minutes.  We hit the turn around point and we all stopped to refill our bottles and eat some of our nutrition.  We were back on the road a few minutes later and made our way back the way we came.

I forgot about the long decline we had coming out of Prairie Creek but definitely felt the incline on the return trip.  I was going along and couldn't understand why I felt so slow until I realized that it was an incline!  It was quite the relief to realize I wasn't as slow as I thought! The final mile back into town is an uphill that is pretty draining.  I was glad to get up it and make my way back to the finish line.  I finished about a minute ahead of Jamye and Janet and cycled back to join them.  I think they got stopped at the stoplights getting into town.

Finish time! 

After wards I racked my bike at the car and fixed myself an Abloc Nutrition chocolate milk for recovery.  It was fun to enjoy the beautiful weather and chat with friends near the finish area.  However I eventually had to head home and get some real food in me! Below is a Flipagram video that Jamye put together of our day!

Post by Jamye Perry.

Tour de Fun

This weekend was the annual Tour de Fun cycling festival to benefit Teen Action and Support Center in Rogers.  TASC is an organization focused on helping teens and the Tour de Fun is their only public fundraisers to support their mission.

WE BELIEVE:

...YOUNG PEOPLE ARE STRONG, INTELLIGENT, AND TALENTED IN UNIQUE AND POWERFUL WAYS.

...YOUNG PEOPLE CAN AND DO
MAKE VALUABLE CONTRIBUTIONS
TO THEIR COMMUNITIES AND SCHOOLS.

...YOUNG PEOPLE HAVE THE
ABILITY TO TAKE CONTROL OF
THEIR FUTURES. 

The Tour de Fun offers several different distances and each year I have increased my distance so it wasn't a shocker that I was easily talked into signing up for the 100K distance.  I had done some 3 hour and 3 1/2 hour training rides so I figured as long as we took it easy it would be manageable.  The hills were something that I was worried about though! I'm not a fast hill climber and for this ride I didn't need to be fast I just needed to make it up and over quite a few hills! 

The route is in an area that I don't normally ride.  The opening 10 miles or so are on a busy-ish highway that heads out to one of the main marinas on Beaver Lake.  It includes an almost immediate climb...why warmup when you just warmup as you climb a monster of a hill!  I was a little surprised to see a few people stopped and either walking or working on bikes on this hill.  We were maybe 3 miles into the ride and there would be a lot more hills ahead.  

I rode with a group of friends of varying abilities.  It was tough to stay together with all the rollers but we did the best that we could to stay in pairs.  Two friends were doing the 50K which would split off around mile 11 at the first rest stop.  The remaining four (Mark and Pauline and Mandy and I) of us would be in for the full 100K.  We had no time ambitions and just enjoyed ourselves on the ride.  We decided to call ourselves Team MoFo...we had two Moe's since Mark and Pauline's last name shortens down to Moe so then Mandy and I made up the Fo.  We got Mo hills and Fo Sure we got em done!

 Here's some pictures from our day!

Rest stop 1 before splitting into 50K and 100K groups

Rest stop 2

Rest stop 3 in the shade! 

Rest stop 4

Definitely a Tough Chik after finishing! 

Overall, it was a great course...challenging but great.  The roads were fairly safe with most of the traffic providing ample room when passing.  The rest stops were well stocked and all of the volunteers were amazing and so helpful.  The hills were definitely challenging but nothing that couldn't be managed.  I found that the further we got in the distance the sooner I would drop to my granny gear on the climbs.  There was just one hill where I had to say a few choice words as I was ascending.  It was just stifling hot and such a long climb but I made it to the top and then everything was good again.  I rode with Mark for a lot of the ride and after our last climb he pointed out that we just had a few cool down miles to the finish.  Somehow he and I have very different definitions of cool down since he started to hammer out 20mph speeds and I had no choice but to stick to his wheel.  I was shocked to still have some leg speed in me at that point but we were on a nice flat road and it actually felt good to hammer for a little while.  

The race starts and finishes in downtown Rogers which has cobblestone streets.  Not my favorite to ride on but as we finished I just wanted to hit the finish line! After we finished we headed to a local Mexican restaurant and we all were starving.  All in all a great way to spend a Saturday morning! 

Tour de Fun Recap

Saturday the Teen Action and Support Center hosted the 5th Annual Tour de Fun event from Lewis and Clark in Rogers.  The Tour de Fun offered several different bike ride distances and even a 5k run.  I signed up for the 50 mile ride which is an out and back route of 25 miles.  This was going to be my 2nd time to complete the 50 mile distance!

The ride had a very early start time of 6:45 AM which really sucks when it comes time to get out of bed.  However, towards the end of the ride as the heat was really starting to build I was definitely thankful for the early start! I got to Lewis and Clark and headed to pick up my registration.  They had a ton of volunteers working the registration table so it went super fast.  It was also great that the store was open so that we could go inside and use real restrooms before the start of the ride.  I ran into AJ and we both took time to cover ourselves in lots of sunscreen.  We were curious about our other friends, Rhonda and Maja, since it was getting close to the start time.

At 6:40 Maja and Rhonda showed up...they had ridden to the start and were running a little late obviously.  We skipped a pre-race picture since they were rushing to store gear and things.  As we rode to the official start line, the rest of the bikers were riding out.  We didn't communicate very well and at the last minute Maja unclipped and stopped.  I barely got unclipped but my friend Kier wasn't as lucky.  He wasn't expecting the stop and ended up toppling over which is more embarrassing than painful.  I felt awful since he fell because he was avoiding hitting me.  After the last biker passed us, the group pulled out to join in. Sadly we were on a small incline and I couldn't get clipped in and started for the life of me.  I had to walk my bike to the end of the store driveway and then sprint to catch up to the rest of the group.  Thankfully, the start was the only eventful part of our day!

Me, Maja, and AJ at the rest stop.

The route follows some of the roads that we ride on for our Tuesday night group rides so I was familiar with the terrain.  I had only done 2 rides of 30-35 miles this year and was a little worried about the distance.  I was mostly worried about the final 5 miles of the route since it included a couple of good sized hills.  I wasn't sure how my fatigued legs would handle those climbs! 

The organizers had two rest stops (one halfway and one at the turnaround.)  This equated to three total stops since we hit the halfway stop going both directions.  It was good to fill up our water bottles and have a few snacks but it also felt great to get off the bike for a minute or two and walk around.  The middle 10 miles were on one of our most common routes and we got pumped up and really worked it for that section.  The funny part about this section is that it always seems to be uphill and always seems to be into the wind no matter which direction you are headed. 

At mile 40, 80% done and starting to get a little hot and hungry.

I was really surprised by how fast the ride flew by even with our stops.  I expected us to slow down a lot more on the second half but we were pretty evenly spaced between the two halves.  I think our time at the turn around was 1:32 and our total time was 3:05:15 and change.  Not bad for my second 50 miler!!!