A weekend playing on bikes and a Daddy daughter dance

Lake Thunderbird Sooner Stampede course

On Saturday I spent a couple of hours riding at Lake Thunderbird with some of my teammates. This is where the 419 Endurance race was held a couple of weeks ago. This time we rode the trails that are going to be used for the Tour De Dirt race there, the Sooner Stampede on the 3rd March 2019.

The course is a fun one but definitely has some pucker up moments for me. It is going to be a two lap race and both laps are a little different.
The gold loop uses the natural features of the area well but also adds wooden features to enhance them.

First wooden enhancement -
Picture stolen from web

That wooded section is steeper than this picture makes it look.
This bridge is going to be part of the second lap, at the top of the bridge it feels pretty frightening.

Image stolen from the web!

It's steeper than it looks when you are up at the top.
- Image stolen from the web

I had a lot of fun riding but I didn't have the legs and lungs and kept getting dropped which was frustrating. It almost made me question my decision to get myself upgraded to a USA Cycling  Cat1 MTB racing licence, however I did race Open/Expert in Alaska and this should be the equivalent to Cat1, hopefully.

Daddy Daughter Dance

It seems that in Oklahoma and possibly the rest of the world (who knows) there is a tradition for a Daddy Daughter dance. This one was a fund raiser for the Jr/Sr Prom. It was a semi formal event and gave Fi and I a chance to dress up and have some more time together. 

Finally slowed her down for a photograph. 

The dance was fun, I was ditched immediately upon arrival when Fiona saw some of her friends however, soon she returned and proceeded to "dance", although not really with me. Think Luna Lovegood, which is awesome! 

Curto Dirto

This was a fundraiser for Curt Dikes who has cancer, It was run out of District Bicycles in Stillwater where he used to work. Curt is clearly a popular chap as hundreds of people came out to ride for him.  Also many industries both locally and nationally donated for many, many raffle prizes (which I failed to win any of).

The ride took us on a 50 mile tour of the local area.  Some of the roads have been used for previous land run events so I thought it would be a great idea to ride an event on roads I am likely to see similar versions of when I ride the Land Run in a few weeks time.

The guys and gals on my team are pretty well known in the area and damn fast riders. This meant that we got a front row start for the event. 

All lined up on the start

We rolled out with a police escort until we hit the gravel then the pace slowly increased as we rode along. Most of the team decided to try and roll with each other and after the first couple of hills we regrouped then stuck together until the end. 

Before the regroup

Rolling together.

Rolling together

The beer and margarita stops along the way definitely helped with this. 

Under the bridge

Given the rest of the team were rolling singlespeed bikes, I found a gear ratio that worked with them 36:15 in my case and rolled happily to the finish.

36:15 making a SS out of a geared bike

Almost at the finish

It was a great day out on the bike with friends. Over $68,000 was raised to help Curt with his medical expenses, I just hope that its enough. 

Strava files