Quivira Park Bike Group Ride 18 - September 11, 2010 LifeTrek.Eroe.com

For the Quivira Park Bike Group Ride 18 we rode the Lake Lenexa Route, which is a 38.7 mile course that includes the famous "Oh My Ogg Hill".  The weather was in the low 70's at the start and low 80's at the end of the ride with a fairly brisk wind from the northwest of about 8-10 MPH.  Humidity was in the mid-range so a very nice morning.

We had 18 riders and not pictured to the left is Joe who had to cut out early before the SAG stop at the Charles J. Stump Park, which is our usual SAG for this route.  The picture was taken at the children's playground at the park.  Notice the dinosaur!

Rob, our resident bicycle photographer and the Chief Photographer with KCTV-5 and KSMO-62 here in Kansas City, took a number of great pictures.  This one is of the group leaving Quivira Park.  Unfortunately a number of times we got so spread out we kept some of the faster riders waiting.  One wait was when Dan, a new rider, and I thought there were still some riders behind us before we made the turn onto College Road and so we backtracked only to find them at the Black Hoof Park, at Lake Lenexa one of our meet-up spots.

We also had a slight delay because Marshall had a flat soon after we started down 127th Street so we stopped at the Johnson County Library on Black Bob Road to change it out.  Thanks to the Quivira Park Bike Group Pit Crew we had him up and rolling again in about 15 minutes.  Joe also got to use his first CO2 cartridge!  I don't want to talk about how many I have used with all my flats this year.  Fortunately the new tires with Kevlar are working great!

This picture shows us going up Ogg Road on the "Oh My Ogg Hill".  It is hard to tell from this picture but the hill has about a 14 degrees rate of climb at this point and then keeps going up after the road turns to the right.  Lots of fun if you like hills!

The last picture shows Dan and Chris exhausted after the long climb up Ogg.  A map of the entire route can be uploaded from my Garmin and it includes the distance to and from my house.  Total distance was 72.09 kilometers and average speed was 23.6 KPH for my ride.

Quivira Park Bike Group Ride 17 - September 4, 2010 LifeTrek.Eroe.com

The Quivira Park Bike Group Ride 17 took the new Cleveland Route today.  It was an absolute gorgeous day with temperatures in the mid 50's at the start and low 70's at the end.  Best of all was there was very low humidity and zero wind - yes, zero wind!  Hard to believe in Kansas where it seems to be windy all the time.  This was probably the best day I have ever had cycling in Kansas and I heard the same from many of the riders.  Just a picture perfect day!

The Group in Cleveland, Missouri

This photograph was taken at the SAG stop in Cleveland, Missouri.  For more information on Cleveland see my blog post Cleveland Mapping Ride from August 19, 2010.


One of our riders, Tim, and his wife recently had a baby girl so his father, Brian (pictured in center with red and white shirt on) was visiting with his wife and so he joined us for the ride.  It turns out that Brian who is turning 60 put us all to shame as he is a super triathlete who has done triathlons in all 50 states and will be working during his 60th year by doing triathlons around the world.  He was pushing even our faster riders, who I know are 30 or more years younger, with speeds approaching 40 KPH on some of the flats.

Peloton in Missouri

We are fortunate to have Rob, who is the Chief Photographer with KCTV-5 and KSMO-62 here in Kansas City, as one of our group riders.   He took the next three shots from his handy camera by shooting while riding.  Notice the beautiful blue sky in the first two pictures.


A map of the ride is available from my Garmin.  My total mileage was 100 kilometers, which included a warm up ride and some extra kilometers after the ride to get to a Metric Century!  My speed was close to 26 KPH but I was actually one of the slower riders so the temperature and lack of wind really added to the speed.

Peloton in Missouri

Rob and Ed