From Jeff City, the first 20 miles on the road were pretty intense with traffic. Also, I am not loving the Missouri roads. Please, petition your state politicians for better roads if you live here in Missouri. There are too many bumps here! It was a pretty hilly ride today and it was hot, hot, hot! I focused on just getting the ride done as quickly as possible. I also focused on physics a lot today. I always tried to get as much momentum built up on the down grades to carry me up the next hill. We talked yesterday about the strategy and physics of attacking rolling hills, and I think a lot of guys felt like they improved their riding on hills today.

We were done at about 80 miles. The first group got in right before noon and the last group at 1:30pm. I fell asleep in front of one of the fans as soon as I got in. It was definitely triple digit heat index and maybe even heat by the end of the ride. That heat will wear you out!

We had two Pi Alpha ride alongs today – Kevin O’Grady and Jeff Pearlman (aka Pearl Jam), and they gave it a valiant effort. I was thoroughly impressed with their riding on one of our toughest days. Pearl Jam did look a bit too crusty with salty sweat, but he made it fine.

Chuck Howard, who rode along the last couple days, crewed along today in our new van, the Ford Windstar. He is such a servant and example for our team this week he is spending with us.

We had a really relaxed rest of the day in Union. We had a wonderful dinner with the Rotary Club, and then we went to wash our vans for our big arrivals into St. Louis tomorrow. We have a big day tomorrow in St. Louis!!

David Holland

This entry was posted on Friday, July 22nd, 2005 at 4:01 pm and is filed under JOH2005. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.