Ride report: Collin Classic (McKinney, TX)

The 16th Collin Classic was a very different ride from the 14th Collin Classic I first took part in, back in 2005. That one was beastly hot, the 50-something mile route was crazy with large-aggregate chip seal, and I was still suffering on a DF bike. After what seemed at the time like an ungodly amount of climbing, we had to battle up one of the vicious hills on the frontage road running south along US-75—only to arrive at McKinney High School to find that the Chipotle eats we'd been promised had been replaced with jelly sandwiches or rubbery hot dogs. Some people were irate because the t-shirts had run out, and they'd been given headsweats instead.

The Classic took a lot of knocks that year, and the ride director has since worked very hard to address the criticisms. In 2006, there was a lot less chip seal, the giant hill at the end had been deleted from the route, and there was pizza and fajita tacos for afters.

This year, the improvements to the 55-mile route (in fact, 53.72 miles) continued. There were still plenty of hills to climb, but I can't remember a ride route that had such a generous portion of smooth, well-maintained pavement. There was a small amount of chip seal, but it didn't feel particularly rough to me. Either it had been broken in, or running my tires a couple PSI softer this year helped. There was no wind to fight, and the heat wasn't too bad.

I had another very good day.

Mr. Strada, Corsa Ken, Mrs. Strada, and a boy named Foo.
(Photo courtesy of www.bicycle-stuff.com.)

I started off with The Stradas and Corsa Ken, but that didn't last more than 100 yards. Thanks to the crush of riders and a mechanical glitch involving Mrs. Strada's computer sensor, I quickly became separated from The Stradas. Not long after, I lost Ken as well. Without any social governor to keep my hammerhead wanna-be tendencies in check, I set about the business of passing... well, anyone between me and a vacant stretch of road. I hadn't started out feeling particularly spry, but my legs warmed up and the HRM showed an average around 160 bpm (not unreasonable, for me). By mile 30, the crowd had thinned slightly, and I pulled in to the rest stop to wait for the Stradas so we could regroup. When they arrived, we compared computer readings and found we'd been averaging 18.5 mph to that point.

A bit further down the road, Mrs. Strada took a spill at a railroad crossing and got banged up a bit. She's a trooper, though, and after taking a few minutes to clean her injuries, we were all back on the road. We all made it across the finish line at around 3 hours and 15 minutes, in plenty of time to chow down on questionable-looking (but muy delicioso) soft tacos filled with a mixture of eggs, potatoes, and some sort of meat-like substance that may or may not have been chicken.

It was in the cafeteria that I finally caught up with LanceNotStrong, Allez, and Allez's husband. I'd run into rcarlino before the ride, and he said Lance was looking for me, but I never was able to spot their group during the ride. I took the opportunity to interrupt their conversation for a few minutes before leaving them to analyze the contents of their tacos.

Notwithstanding my glowing review of the Wild Ride, the 16th Collin Classic might have replaced it as my best for-pay ride experience of this season, if the route had been about 10 miles longer and if I'd spent less time separated from my riding buddies. As it is, I'm pretty pleased at having finished a ride of that length, with hills, with an 18.1 mph rolling average.