Epic weekend rides

There are a couple of weekend group rides that I sometimes do if there are no races going on. Saturday is the Francis Tuttle Vo-Tech ride leaving from 122 and Rockwell and the Bricktown ride on Sunday, which starts at Stars and Stripes park at Lake Hefner. Both rides are cool in that it's only a quick 3 or 4 mile ride from my house to either one.

This past weekend was different in that we had a special guest join in both rides! Team Milram rider Dominik Roels from Germany was in town visiting his cycling friends in Oklahoma City.
Dominik was a foreign exchange student here in 2003-2004. I rode with him a few times back then, and even at 16-17 years old, he was super strong. He's 22 now and fresh off a pretty decent Protour season. Dominik competed in and finished the Vuelta a Espana, getting 3rd in stage 15 and finishing very well in all the time trial stages. He raced very aggressively getting a lot of TV time as he was in several break a ways.

I met up with a couple of my teamates Erin and Jeremy as well as Andy Chasteen and the Willis brothers, and the five of us rode out to the Vo-Tech ride. As expected, there were a ton of people there. Depending on who shows up, this ride is usually fast, but sometimes, it's brutally fast. National tandem time trial champions Gil and Helen showed up on their fast tandem so the ride was semi fast in the beginning and super fast at the end.
Part of the ride group at Java Daves in Edmond.

Dominik and me.

Notice the Stars and Stripes jersey looming back waiting to throw down some power........

This is on the return trip from the coffee shop.
After the dust had settled on Saturday, I was downloading my power data and discovered I had set a new 1 minute personal power record beating the old record by 47 watts!

Sunday I couldn't decide if I wanted to go to Tulsa for a CX race or do the Bricktown ride. I decided to do the Bricktown ride at the last second with the thought of I would be going to Tulsa again next weekend for the State Championships, and I would probably have to spend all week cleaning my cross bike because of the wet weather.

The Sunday ride was definitely easier due to the cold and rain. There were only 8 people there so I got to pick Dominik's brain about training and talk alot about racing and riding.

Our rainy day group at the coffee shop Downtown taken from Brian Parks phone.

An awesome weekend all around. I'm a little bummed to have missed the race in Tulsa as it sounded like it was a blast. Time for a recovery week and then my target CX race this weekend.