Day 8 Hereford, TX to Sayre, OK

Day 8 was a pretty stinkin flat 180 mile ride.

Breakfast was seriously quiet this morning. I think I could hear people actually chewing their food. Within a few minutes of finishing breakfast we rode as a group directly into a fantastic sunrise. This morning's opening ride was much better than some of the other early morning beginnings. We are riding better as a group and we have a real sense of camaraderie now. We are the Elite Pac Tour darn it, and today we will ride 180 miles like it is nothing.

Well that's at least how it started...

We did ride as a group into our first rest stop at 35 miles. After the rest stop (6 minutes tops) we were back in the saddle and going hard. We had a few miles of paceline riding and then the wind shifted. From there we stretched wide across the road in an echelon to find shelter from the cross wind. (Some of the other bloggers have explained this already. Check their sites out for an explanation. Too many words for me to write.)

Anyway, the going got hard at this point and for the next 20 miles or so I thought it sure would be fun to just sit up and take it easy. The thing that saved me from leaving the group was that we were on some pretty bad frontage roads along the interstate. They were a mish mash of broken concrete and black top that had long since lost the black and some of the top. It is a lot more fun to fly over these roads fast in a group than to go slow by yourself.

Oh yeah and there is Lon's message board at the end of the day. It sure was fun to be on the board Saturday, wouldn't it be cool to be on there two days in a row?

What a great group of guys to ride with. We didn't talk as much as yesterday but we didn't have to. It was fun to just hang in there with the guys and go real fast. At the end of the day I checked my cycling computer and we had gone 180 miles at an average speed just shy of 22 miles per hour on the bike. What a rush.

Unfortunately I didn't take as many pictures today. My theory on taking pictures is to just shoot massive quantities and some will turn out okay. I was hanging by a thread most of today so I took less than half as many as usual. Plus I was living off of "Cliff Shots" and I got gel everywhere in my jersey pockets. So tonight I'm washing the camera in the bathroom sink. Hopefully the camera will still work to take pictures tomorrow.

Tomorrow is another flat day but our longest mileage day at 206 miles. My plan is to rest as much as possible in preparation for a nasty day of climbing on Tuesday.

See you then...