Ride Report: Tour de Paris (Texas)

I've done more than a dozen charity rallies over the last couple years. Some have been scenic, others were challenges to my endurance and stubborness, and others just plain miserable. But yesterday's Tour de Paris was a new high point for me, because it was the funnest 62.8 miles I've ever ridden at one swat.

The Foo Family had originally planned on loading up The Grape with bikes and gear and driving up to Paris together. Unfortunately, Turtle came down with a sinus infection that turned into a once-every-fifteen-seconds cough that won't let her sleep, much less do a bike ride. That combined with the predicted triple-digit temperatures led to the decision that I should go on alone.

I woke up at 4am, half an hour before the alarm was set to go off, showered, finished packing my car (not a grape), and hit the road. The drive to Paris took me about 90 minutes, instead of the two hours that Yahoo! Maps had predicted, and I attributed this to the fact that there were few vehicles on the road, except for ones with bikes strapped to them. Unfortunately, there wasn't much of anything along the route and my plan to pick up breakfast as I neared Paris turned out to be a bad one. Clif bars and water for breakfast will get the job done, but Foo prefers to start a long ride with a bit of sausage, egg, and cheese biscuit percolating in his gut.

I arrived with plenty of time to pick up my and Turtle's packets (she might as well have her T-shirt, no?), get my bike set up, and apply sunscreen. I parked next to Safeman9, another BikeJournal.com member, and we had a nice chat while setting up. A friendly bumblebee became intrigued with my black and yellow bike and my black and yellow cycling duds. Too friendly perhaps. As Safeman9 noted, it appeared the little hummer was looking for a date.

The Tour de Paris is a mass start, which means that instead of the longer distances going off first, everyone goes off together. This has always made me a bit nervous, because it means that you spend the first five miles or so just trying to work your way through all the bike path wobblers and slow-paced social riders to find some "clear air" to ride in. On the recumbent, it's even dodgier because I'm just not as agile as I was on my wedgie.

But I got the job done and by about 20 minutes into the ride, I was in the open and cruising along the flats at between 18 and 22 mph. Soon after I hit clear air, I noticed a guy in full Liquigas kit riding with a woman in pigtails and a lot of pink stuff on her bike. Aha! I thought. Allez and Lancenotstrong from BikeJournal.

"Allez! Allez! Allez!" I yelled out, both because that's cyclist for "faster!" and because... well, I was trying to catch their attention. I think my sudden appearance was sort of a rolling non sequitur, because as I pulled up next to them, Allez gave me the sort of look one might reserve for something just scraped off the bottom of one's shoe. Lance, however, clicked on the situation right away.

"Foo man!" he hollered, grinning. We shook hands briefly, peloton style, and I rode on, not wanting to interrupt their conversation any more than I had. But how cool was that? Not even half an hour into the ride, and I'd already met three people I recognized from the BikeJournal forum.

Not long after, a rider called out to me as I was overtaking him. It turned out this was royshiro, a BikeJournal member who had been trying earlier in the week to arrange for a group of us ride together. And so we did, Roy and I, and we had a blast just riding along and chatting. I've rarely had more pleasant company, on or off the bike, and it made for a very enjoyable ride.

By the time we reached the midpoint of our 100K route, the temperature had become noticeably hotter. My computer showed an average speed of 17.7 mph to that point, but we decided that we'd take it easier and conserve energy on the return leg. To punctuate the point, I had a concentration lapse as we were leaving the rest stop and promptly experienced a gravity failure that left me with a dinged knee and some road rash down the length of my shin.

Later, while cleaning that up, I came to understand that hardcore riders don't shave their legs to be more aerodynamic; they shave them because it's easier to clean road rash without all that fur in the way.

At about 9 miles to the finish, we came into some rollers, and I temporarily took my leave of Roy and agreed to meet him back at the parking lot. With the first climbs of any significance coming up, our rhythms were bound to get out of synch and I wanted to maintain as much momentum as I could. When I rolled up to the finish, the LED sign out in front of the high school read "106°", and the cheerleaders were bouncing around like they were at a cool autumn football game. God bless 'em.

I finished the 62.8 miles with a 16.5 mph average. According to my heart rate monitor, my theory that my max heart rate has dropped from 193 to 188 isn't worth the blog it's written on. After the ride, it showed my max for the day was 197. Must've been the heat, because I really couldn't recall any point in the ride during which I'd been working that hard.

After Roy arrived, we went inside to change out of our wet cycling duds and spent some time yukking it up with RBENT's Bob McClure (of yellow plasticard-faired recumbent fame) while cooling down. Roy and I then drove to Ta Molly's, a local Tex-Mex restaurant, where he graciously treated me to lunch using a gift certificate he'd brought with him. No quesadillas ever tasted so good.

After lunch, we said our goodbyes and I headed down the road back toward home. Heading west on highway 82 out of Paris, I passed an entire field parked hub to hub with rusted farm tractors and moved "compact digital camera" a position further up the list of things that I'd like to have once Turtle and I have more money than we know what to do with.