I’ve been putting off Metric 12. I had the first 11 done by mid-June, but my ride consistency dropped off and I knew 12 was going to hurt.  The clock was ticking and temperature dropping, so I finally decided to knock it out this past weekend. I mounted my fat bike early Sunday morning with mid-30 temps and a threat of rain in the forecast, hell bent to get that cup.

The plan was to roll from my house in Columbia, MO west to Prairie Lick via the Katy Trail and back. This route would give me a good coffee stop near the turnaround and a few detour options if I wanted to add some hills to break the monotony.  I’d stop at all the required photo op sites and make the first half casual, then put the headphones in and suffer the ride back.

Here’s the photo summary of the ride out in order of appearance….

I took a quick detour up the bike path to Les Bourgeois winery just so I could ride the super fast decent into Rocheport on Hwy BB. Those fat tires were singing.

After Rocheport I took a short offshoot into a conservation area to check out a campsite for future reference. The bridge to the site didn’t inspire much confidence, but held up enough for me to cross over and back again.

After stopping for some coffee, I continued on from Booneville to my turn around point at Prairie Lick, at which point the headphones came out. As an experiment, I opted to listen to the same song on repeat for the rest of the ride, which ended up being about 2.5 hours. It really helped me just zone out, put my head down, and do the work needed to get back. It was a long flat churn.

All in all it was a good ride. I stayed comfortably warm and managed to beat the hints of rain that showed up later. My body wasn’t too happy about the effort and I spent the rest of the day fighting off the sleep monster and foam rolling out the evils. Such is a life in pursuit of the cup.

– Jim