Ft Davis and back in 40 easy hours

Off to Ft. Davis at 7am Saturday.  Craig and John nice enough to pick Jim up at the house since he worked til 2am.  Myhre is the king of multitasking - tending to Goofy, while driving, pulling a trailer and talking on the phone.

Foxy gracious enough to lend us his trailer for the 2nd week in a row.  Myhre with the perfect setup in the bed of his pickup.  Bags, food and wheels in the trailer, bikes in the pickup bed.  Jim in and out of sleep in the back seat of the truck.

Jim woke up to see Myhre with no shirt on, he had one on when they left San Antonio.  The next time Jim woke he opened his eyes carefully, relieved that Myhre had his pants on...

We rolled into the Prude Ranch around 2pm.  Ft. Davis is as, or more, beautiful than Big Bend, for sure.

Lots of animals out on the road.

Killer wasn't with us or we may have had a few heads to mount on Monday morning.

After a minor trailer mishap at the Ranch we did our first stage - the Mount Locke McDonald Observatory Hill Climb.  The pic may look blurry, but that's your actual vision after climbing the last mile to 7000 feet at race pace.  

The plan was to do the 3 stages of next months Hammerfest stage race as training and recon.

The Hill Climb stage starts at Prude Ranch and ends at the Observatory.  11 miles with 2000' climbing, 500' in the last mile.

Folks interested in training and racing with power can learn alot looking at their data.  For example the last mile here - Jim planned to ride the last mile at 400 watts.  If you look at the heart rate, looks like the mile went as planned.  However, looking at the power you can really see it moving downwards from 400 watts initially.  This helps with analysis of the training and planning for future rides and races.

Next we drove down to Ft. Davis to ride the TT stage.  Out 9 miles, then back 7 miles.  False flat uphill with 500' climbing out, then 7 miles back.  25-30mph steady headwind going out combined with the constant uphill grade resulted in a 16mph average going out and 32 mph average coming back.  Good info to plan for the upcoming race regarding racing heart rate and gearing.

Ayers forgot his pants to change into after the ride.  (We wouldn't know that Myhre dropped his keys to the bike racks til the next morning.)  Craig initially he tries to squeeze into Myhre's 31 waist shorts, which didn't fit for some reason.   So he puts on Myhre's jammies (scrub bottoms) and insisted on being called Dr. Ayers the rest of the weekend.

We were suspicious that Dr. Ayers oufit contributed to the "45 minute" wait at the Hotel Limpia in Ft. Davis, so we drove to Alpine.  Had a great meal a the Reata Restaurant.  Kane recommended , not sure if it was because of the food or its 5th St. address.

Sunday did RR loop. Tough tough course. First 5 miles downhill w/ tailwind, nxt 35 falseflat uphill into 25mph headwind.  Then the climbing began.  Jim waited for Craig at the top of the feed zone climb, checking out some stinging insect to pass the time.

Craig came hammering over the top without looking back.  His day was about done as he was near total body failure and close to vomiting.

Or perhaps it was Balmorrhea?

So here's the Road Race stage.  Now to figure out how to race it in a month...

Starting the final 15 miles (without Ayers who was puking under a tree hoping the coyotes didn't come grazing before Jim and John got back with the truck) Jim rode past a pack of Javelinas.  West tells me that the Javelina is closer relation to a dog than a pig and this one got separated from his peleton and started barking at Jim!!

Great weekend, a trip we'll have to consider annually as prep for the Ft. Davis race.  Prude Ranch makes a great staging area, the roads are great, the rides are tough and food is excellent.

Thanx again to Foxworth for the use of the trailer and Myhre for doing the driving.  Stay tuned to see how the race goes next month!!  The biggest disappointment, particularly for Wes was that we didn't stop to get a pic of the most beautiful woman in West Texas (in contention beyond there for sure.)  She was riding horseback in a halterback as we drove back to the ranch after picking Craig up off the road.  In our exhausted state we didn't think to turn around a ask her for a picture.  Oh well, Wes was supposed to have gone with us, I'm sure she'll be out there in a month watching us race.