50 Miler

     Once again I decided that I didn't want to sleep in so I woke Kayleigh up early (around 7:00am) for a long ride.  I wanted to do a two and a half hour ride so I mapped out a 50 mile course.  After I invited Kayleigh to join me I realized the figure eight loop that I had charted would take a little longer than planed but I decided not to change it.  I figured there is not too much of a difference between 2 and a half hours and three hours when you have been riding that long. 
     The ride was pretty uneventful until just over half way when we were about to enter Miliken and someone decided that they wanted to throw a newspaper out of their window at us.  They threw it from the drivers side window so it was hung up in the air stream and never made it to the side of the road.  You have to love the country hicks that live in our area.  I appreciate the free read, but it is extremely hard to keep my heart rate up when I am reading the Tribune article about how exercise is more than a trend in Weld County.
     We kept on pushing until we were about 7 miles from home and I pulled up with a front flat tire.  We were prepared to change out one tube so it wasn't a problem.  Before I jumped back on my bike, I checked my rear tire, and it appeared to be a little squishy too.  I figured that if I pushed it hard home I could make it before it went flat.  After three more miles or so I began to feel some hard impacts coming from the rear so I pulled over onto the sidewalk.  The rear was completely flat, as I waited for Kayleigh to catch up to tell her to go and grab the pick up wagon (Bruce the truck) I took off my shoes and helmet and hung out on the side of the road.  When she finally pulled up, she noticed she had a front flat as well. 
     We were not prepared to fix three flats in one ride, so rather than finishing an awesome 50 mile ride in two hours and forty-five minutes, we had to walk our bikes the last part of the ride and finished our day just under four hours. 
     I now know that one spare tube and CO2 cartridge is not enough, I may find that I race in St. George with at least three tubes and four cartridges.  I would not want to put in all of this work and then not finish because of a blown tube.  I would rather carry the weight and be over prepared than DNF in my first Ironman.