My fastest Century, with a little help from my friends

We didn't have a welcoming sign to NM but we got "Hasta La Vista!"

100 yards up the road the peloton posed as we entered Oklahoma

The long flat roads of Oklahoma

More of the same

The morning winds were favorable and the 8 person peloton rolled out in fine fashion. Frank and Jack rode solo again today. We covered the first fifty miles in a little over 2 hours. After lunch the winds started to shift so we adopted different riding tactics for the next 45 miles, using an echelon formation to combat the 15+ mph crosswinds and it worked. For the first 100 miles I was still averaging over 21 mph. Then we turned south into Guymon, straight into the headwinds. The last ten miles were tough but we all made it in with an average over 20 mph for the day. According to the local weather gusts were over 25 mph!

Today was downhill! We started at 5,050' and ended at 3,100' We still had over 1,300' feet of climbing during the day, but the high elevations are behind us so no more long steep climbs.

12 miles out of Clayton we crossed the state line into Oklahoma. The panhandle of OK is flat with nothing much to see. The highlights we several cornfields with the crops over 8' tall. Every so often we would see the circular irrigation systems on very large farms. Seems like there would be a house, barn and storage silos every 10-15 miles on one side of the road or the other.

The ride was pretty much uneventful as the only flat came at the 80 mile point for Archie S. Total miles was 107 miles. I burned over 2,600 kcals.

Dinner tonight was at a local family run restaurant. We are enjoying a broad sampling of dining in small town America on this trip. For the past few days, steak is the primary item on the menu, so everyone is already starting to ask when we will see a more traditional menu. Don't get me wrong, the steaks have been delicious; when you ride 100+ miles everyone joins the clean plate club. The only bummer about tonight's restaurant was the limited dessert menu; everyone opted to pass on it. Our dinner restaurant in Cortez had no desserts! Rickie Bobby has the sweet tooth out of the group.

Since we are now in the far western reaches of the Central time zone, it remained daylight longer this evening, which means sunrise will come later in the morning. More sleep time! However, we have a grueling day tomorrow with 125 windy miles ahead of us; we drop another 1,200' in elevation despite climbing 3,800' mostly over rollers all day.