MS 150 Ride Report

This past weekend I participated in my third two-day MS150 bike ride. The two previous have been from Houston to Austin with a stop over in LaGrange, this one was from Frisco to Fort Worth with a stop over in Justin. Or at least that was the plan. Thursday night of last week I received an email from the MS folks saying that due to the swine flu Tarrant county had canceled all public gatherings for the upcoming weekend. This meant that Fort Worth would no longer be our finishing destination.

When I heard the news I was pretty bummed because I figured they would simply cancel day two of the event, and I was questioning if I wanted to drive 7 plus hours roundtrip to ride only a single day. Luckily the MS folks were able to make some quick changes to the route and finishing venue and Day 2 was back on (at least for the time being).

So Carri, our friend Michelle and I headed up to Frisco. We stayed at a pretty cool hotel called Aloft that is part of the W Hotel family. Really funky and modern, but they had a nice hotel bar that had a good happy hour so we were all happy.

After receiving another email from the MS group later in the evening stating that overnight camping was no longer allowed at Texas Motor Speedway we were a little worried but were glad that we knew that at least Day 1 was still on, even though they did reiterate that if it was raining the route might be closed.

The rest of the evening was pretty uneventful but the 5 AM wakeup call did come pretty early, but nothing left to do but gear up and ride.

The weather was pretty nice, overcast and not too oppressively hot, even though it was humid as a mother. Unfortunately my computer was not working so I did not know my speed or cadence for the first 38 miles. I think without that info I was going a little faster than planned and ended up losing Michelle pretty quickly. Sorry Chel.

All through the day you could tell we going to get weather and twice I rode through areas where the temperature immediately dropped 20 degrees. Then I would ride about 20 minutes and just as quickly as it dropped it warmed back up. This is the first time in my 4 years of riding that this has ever happened to me. And it happened twice. The second time going from cold to hot my glasses even fogged up. Obviously we were going in and out of the leading edge of the incoming front.

Luckily I finished the 88 mile route in a little over 4.5 hours and was ahead of the weather.

Michelle on the other hand got caught in some weather, but luckily made it back in great spirits.

As with most Texas storms the storm that hit the Speedway came fast and furious with tons of rain, high winds, and lots of lightning and thunder. Luckily we had ridden with the Saint Arnold Brewery team and they had plenty of Rudy's barbeque and several delicious varieties of their beer to help us weather the storm. It is amazing how fast the campground area turned into rushing rivers of water.

We had a feeling with all the rain and more expected the next day that day two would be canceled so we began packing up our gear for the drive back to Austin, and sure enough shortly after we left an announcement was made canceling the second day.

So after everything was said and done the second day was indeed canceled, not due to the swine flu but due to good old Mother Nature. But I was not disappointed at all...I got to ride my bike, I got to hang out with friends, I made some new friends, I tried some really delicious beer, and most importantly I was able to raise funds for the MS Society to help those affected with MS. A pretty good weekend in my book.