The Great Escape!

In spite of the threat of cold and rainy weather today, my neighbor and I woke up early and rode in a fundraiser bike ride called The Great Escape Bicycle Ride in Manvel, TX. This event is a fundraiser for the Brazoria County Sheriffs Office Reserves. As is typical for these kind of rides, there were several different ride distances to choose from: 14, 40, 52, 70 and 86 miles. Up until this point, my longest ride so far had been 62 miles, which occurred last weekend in Baytown. I figured another 24 miles wouldn't be too bad, so we took off on the 86 mile route.

The morning started out a bit chilly, but it wasn't long before we both realized that this was nearly a perfect day for riding. It wasn't too cold, very little wind, the rain stayed away and we had overcast clouds to keep the temperature from climbing too much...ahhh...PERFECT!

About five and a half hours after we hopped on our bikes, we found ourselves back at the car. A few miles from the finish line I heard a sudden popping noise from my rear tire. It sounded as though a wheel spoke had broken. However, after it happened, I didn't hear anything rattling around or grinding in the chain so I kept on cruising toward the finish line. Once I stopped, I looked back at the rim and noticed that it was severely out of round. Sure enough, a spoke had broken just a few miles from the finish line and the resulting unbalanced tension from the remaining spokes warped the rim! I bet the wheel would not have made it through the entire ride if the spoke would have instead, broken a few miles from the start. Lucky me!

The rain that had threatened to get us wet all morning started about 20 minutes after we finished the ride....Lucky me again!

Todays miles: 86, Total miles: 507.8