This past weekend I had the pleasure of riding/running 50 miles on the historic Route 66 through Oklahoma (through the night!). My wife was running the Mother Road 100 Mile race (www.motherroad100.com) and I was along supporting her and trying to be a good cheer leader. Anyhow, as this race was all run on roads I thought it would be fun to pack my KH24 and ride portions of the last 50 miles with her. Runners are allowed to have pace “runners” with them the last 70 miles but I’d asked the race director before hand if it would be OK (ha ha, get it OK = Oklahoma!!) if I could ride along with her on my unicycle. They said OK (enough now!) so I started riding with her shortly after dark. I must say it was a lot of fun riding through the night. The 24" wheel (with Maxxis Hookworm) with 150mm cranks was just right to keep up as she jogged along and good enough to ride slow when she took walk breaks. What made it the most fun was the shocked looks of other crews, runners and pacers as we overtook them during the night. Boy I bet they thought they were hallucinating! Asides from a couple of drunk Okie’s who tried to run some runners off the road at 2:00 a.m. it was a very dark, quiet and peaceful ride. And it did get pretty cold! It got below freezing during some portions of the course, especially when the contouring road would drop into the hollow between hills and often cross a small stream. Anyhow, just thought I’d post a short report about my ride. I ended up riding about 33 miles and running 17 (there was one section that was on a loose gravel road so I opted to run it rather than ride, especially in the dark!). How did my wife do? She completed the 100 miles in just a hair under 21 hours to finish as the first woman and 12th overall out of around 120 finishers…
Your wife’s an ultrarunner too? That sounds really cool, I can imagine the looks of the other runners and crews! Next–Badwater!
What did you do with the unicycle when you were running?
Sounds like a good ride. If you had written before the event a couple of us would probably have come to meet you. They probably wouldn’t have let more than one uni on the course but we could have done some muni near OKC.
unstable: Yes, Badwater is indeed my wife’s dream ultra to do soon. The problem is the race director there is a real $(%(!!! She applied one year and truly had an impressive resume but was rejected while far less qualified runners were granted entry!! So we’ll see, I keep telling her we should just assemble the team and gear and just go do it. Any crossing in July-August from Badwater to Mt. Whitney is recorded and is offical…who needs their race? Oh, my mother-in-law went to the race with us so she drove the car the last 50 miles so I just stashed my unicycle in the car when I was running.
Doug: It was indeed a fun ride, so quiet and peaceful. Quite surreal riding through the night! Unfortunately running, crewing and pacing plus the sleep deprivation i.e. losing a night’s sleep really took it out of us. So I doubt I’d wanted to do any Muni right after, plus our travel plans were pretty tight; essentially we flew in, did the race and flew right out! Also I didn’t even know if I’d be allowed to uni until right before we left to travel to OKC. Yeah I don’t think they’d wanted multiple unicyclists out there at once as the pacing rules only allowed for one pacer at a time! Anyhow we ran with someone who mentioned she knew of a mountain unicyclist who’s ridden that real tough mountain bike race in Oklahoma? Was that you?
Doug: we ran with someone who mentioned she knew of a mountain unicyclist who’s ridden that real tough mountain bike race in Oklahoma? Was that you?
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yep…it comes up again in early March, Ft. Sill Army Base, Hills Of Hell.
Hills of Hell? Well I’ll definitely have to put that on my to-do list if the timing works out!