Tupelo, MS to Stuttgart, AR

Well, we made it in and out of Mississippi as quick as we could. We'll do the same as the past post by starting with today's ride and working backwards.

Clarksdale, MS to Stuttgart, AR. Well, today was an up and down day. My thigh felt prett good this morning (morning being 5am). We had 94 miles to ride which included two lunch stops at 33 miles and 66 miles. The first third of the trip went by so smoothly. I broke away from a small group I started with pretty early and was cuising at 17mph or so on my own. I caught up with Katie K and Karen and rode with them until first lunch. We hit a stretch of rode where we didn't turn for 15 miles so it was just cruising. I was leading these two for a bit and figured 15-16 was a good pace until I realized I was pulling them at 18-20 at some points. The winds were definitely in our favor at that point. We made it to the Mississippi River in Helena and crossed over into Arkansas. After Lunch, Kelsey and I rode the rest of the trip together through the roughest headwinds I've had yet. It definitely slowed the pace down a lot. This is also when my knee started to get a little intense. Tough last 20 miles, but I made it.

Oxford,MS to Clarksdale, MS. Oxford was cool town, but I'll talk about next in the section about that ride day. This ride day SUCKED. I felt great in the morning and jumped on the B$ train (brian aka. B$ is one of the leaders) with Katie R, Zac and Preston and we were booking it for a bit. After Preston and I got dropped from that, my knee started to absolutely kill. It hurt, I stopped for a few. It hurt again, so I stopped and put icyhot on it. It hurt again, I stopped again, put my bike down, threw my helmet and called Megan in the van to come get me. So this was my first and hopefully only missed riding day. I missed 60 miles because of my knee. I was absolutely pissed off, and upset and just everything. At the end of the day though I knew I made the right decision. I'm learning about the physical barriers and challenges involved. I've never done something this physically exhausting and I'm finding out my limits every day. I also had to learn how to swallow my pride for once and ask for help. It's not really something I'm used to doing.

Tupelo, MS to Oxford, MS. This was a 60 mile day in the absolute nastiest heat and humidity. Semi-decent ride on some iffy roads as far as quality. Oxford was a pretty cool little town. Home of the University of Mississippi otherwise known as Ole Miss. Nice campus that they were having a little concert at, but I'll get to that in a short bit. We had dinner and swimming at one of the cycling club of Oxford members house. Swimming pool and beer for everyone, plus a pretty awesome dinner. It was kind of nice to spend some time eating and having some fun outside of a gymnasium. Afterwards, some of us attended the small folk concert on the lawn at Ole Miss campus. Preston and I went with the intention of throwing the frisbee around and eventually developed a nice group of people. So we of course started a nice game of ultimate frisbee with 12 of us. I've never actually played a game before, but thats to the lessons from Kate Clark in MN I was a natural. I had so much fun playing though.

Thats pretty much it for now. We get to Little Rock tomorrow and we get a day off on Thursday.