metric century meet up

another great dailymile meet up this morning. bryan j, who lives in wellington, and i met on dailymile less than a week ago. i was so excited to find someone that lived so close whose cycling workouts looked similar to mine. we immediately struck up a conversation about getting together to ride. today was the day it worked out.

i rode alone out to anson road with a minor detour into mayfield because i was ahead of schedule. bryan rode up about 7:05 and we talked for a bit before deciding on the route we'd take. that decided, we rolled north toward anson.

the ride to anson was filled with get-to-know-you stuff. what do you do? how many kids do you have? how'd you get into cycling? it was interesting and helped the time pass quickly. soon we were through anson and pulling to a stop at parallel. we took a brief break there while a car passed by, then rolled west toward conway springs.

going west was great! the wind was at our backs as much as it would be all morning since it seemed to be mostly from the east with only a hint of southness. (i made that word up.) we cruised up and down the shallow rollers. it was funny that we both knew about chitwood's barn for different reasons. i knew it for the country music on saturday nights. he knew it from family reunions.

in conway springs, we stopped at a convenience store and picked up a little liquid refreshment and talked for a bit before heading west again toward argonia road. riding along parallel west of conway springs is a chore at times. the hills are steep, but they are long and they come at you one after another after another. i think we were both glad when it was time to head south.

riding south, we slowed just a bit. it was warming up and the wind was at least a little in our faces. we were still talking about this and that. bryan had done freewheel oklahoma, a cross state trek, a while back and he told me about several incidents from his days in red dirt country.

in argonia, we stopped at my house to refill our bottles with cold gatorade before heading east again. i was close to fifty miles and wanted to get in a metric century. we had to do a little more single file riding on the highway, so we couldn't talk as easily as our time together came to a close. still, we talked enough that i missed my metric century turn around by a few miles. i ended up going ten miles out when i'd only planned to go seven miles.

we talked for a few minutes at chicaskia (chick-ask-ee-uh) road before going our separate ways. bryan continued on east toward his home in wellington. i did a u-turn and pedaled toward argonia. i rode a bit harder than i should have for the first few miles and paid for it the last four. it was a lot warmer than i thought and i had less to drink than i would have liked. i just kept turning the cranks and ended up at home ready to drink a ton more.

i've downed about a quart of gatorade now and feel a little better. i guess i'll go shower and then see what the Lord brings my way in the day's remaining hours.

one more thing...today's miles made this week my third largest week for miles - 219 miles - and made july my highest mileage month ever - 854 miles. what's even better is that i went 31 more miles this month than i did in march and i did it in 1'02" less time! i love it when that happens! (67.23 miles @ 17.7mph)