Big Thicket Bike Tour - report

Yesterday's ride was fun and enjoyable, but I'm not likely to ride it again....

Apparently I misread the registration form. My buddy, Wyatt picked up a form from Memorial park, which stated the race started at 7am. We arrived at 6:30 after a 2-hour drive from Kingwood for early registration. To our surprise, we could not find the start. Actually, we found the location, but no one was there. We drove around Beaumont, trying to locate the sponsoring bike store. When we found the empty store we decided to "give up and go home". The route we were taking back home happened to take us by the original start point (HEB). A final glimpse revealed a pop-up tent that was not there before. My watch read, 6:52. I told Wyatt, lets see if we have enough time to register. Come to find out, the race did not start until 8am. Dang. The paperwork stated, "Registration and check-in starts at 7am". All I read was, STARTS AT 7am". Oh well, better to be early than late!

We took the opportunity to socialize with a few other bikers from the area. The small crowd of fifty riders seemed equally mixed between serious cyclist and casual riders. The tour consisted of four distances; 69, 60, 42, and 28. Wyatt and I are just entering the bike scene, so we chose the 28-miler.

The RD released all the riders by distance with a 3-4 minute separation. Our wave of ten riders were the last to take off. Wyatt and I took the lead and were cruising 17 mph, at a conversational pace. After a couple miles we made a turn, which put the wind in our face. We stayed at a conversational pace, but our speed dropped to 15 mph. Then the ride got 'scary'....

The road surface turned into an asphalt-gravel mix. Not only did we slow way down (10 mph), but we took a beating on that surface! Wyatt and I wondered how long this might last when all of the sudden the route took another turn for the worst. In order to cross a river, we had to enter and ride on a highway. Yes, a highway... full of cars traveling 70-80 mph. The entering and exiting ramp did not have a shoulder, so we were actually sharing the road with the traffic. The bridge had a shoulder, but it was full of road debris and large cracks in the surface which kept the speed below 10 mph.

After the bridge we had another mile of asphalt-gravel mix surface. When we finally hit normal roads again it was like a DREAM. Wyatt and I picked off numerous riders along the way... all from the prior waves. The 29-mile course was an out and back, therefore all four distances made it to the first stop at 14 miles. We also knew what to expect on the return trip.

We kept the rest stop short and sweet. Wyatt and I were the "big boys" and we proved it by helping them with their surplus of aid station cookies.

Wyatt and I noticed a pod of 3-men riding back after the aid station. We were confused how they got in front of us. Later we realized they had left in a prior wave. No big deal, but we made it our mission to catch them. The wind wasn't completely at our back, yet it wasn't in our face either. This seemed to help our tiring legs. After a little work we caught them on the bridge and tagged along for the ride for a couple miles. They were cruising 15-16 mph with hardly no effort. Wyatt kept wanting to pass them, but I told him it was not smart to flex any muscles, as these guys would surely "school us" on biking. With 2 miles to go, Wyatt couldn't resist the urge and took off and like an idiot.... I followed. We maintained a solid 19 mph pace for the majority of the time. Sure enough, with half a mile to go, two of the three men blew by us like we were sitting on the curb. I told Wyatt this would happen, but he didn't believe me. The first sign was the ease at which they were riding. The second and probably bigger sign was the Colnago bike. Weekend warriors such as ourselves don't ride $5,000 bike's.

All in all, it was fun and we both had a good time. Unfortunately, the safety issue with cycling on a busy highway outweighed our "fun" level.

Stats:
Mileage: 29.10
Time: 1:56:10 -- avg. 15.0 mph