Week #19 & #20 Getting ready to take on the Flint Hills

 

Week #19 - 468 miles

Week #20 - 442 miles

The last couple of weeks I have been trying to prepare for the Flint Hills Ultra. I think I have my bike set up now after lots of changes. Mostly coming home after a long ride and taking something off. My goal is to ride as long as possible before I have to stop. Hopefully I will only need to sleep a couple hours at a time before I get back on the road again. Since this is twice as far as I have ever gone, I am not sure how my body will react. I know that I have put in the miles even though I have done lots of really long rides this year but I am up on total miles over last year and one more 100+ ride. Each time I do one of these long adventures I learn something new and hopefully I will be able to apply that to this ride. The biggest thing is going to be able to listen to my body and sleep when I really need it. By not trying to push through, I hope to be able to ride a little faster overall. The other big thing is limit my stop time. Making the stops efficient should save me huge time over the few days.

As far as bikes go, I managed to get True Grit #3 over 20K this week. That bring me up to over 63K miles on the Laufs since the fall of 2018.

Week #18 Getting a solid week of saddle time in

 

Week #18 - 550 miles

Got in a couple 100+ mile rides this week and one of them with the Seigal loaded up. I am making a couple of changes to lighten the load for Flint Hills Ultra. We will have 50,000 ft. of climbing over 1050ish miles, so any weight I can save will be a bonus. I think by dropping the tent and hoping for good weather is my best option. I know that I can get a motel room if needed, but I hope that I don't have to do that. I am really excited to see how the body will react to days of consecutive 250+ miles. It should be around 4-5 days to complete the route depending on how the weather is.