Pactour Elite Southern Transcontinental: Day 13

Day 13:	Batesville MS to Forest MS
Mileage/Ride Time:	175 miles 9:27	Time Lv/Arr:	6:30am/5:11pm
Climbing:	3200ft	Avg Speed/Work:	18.5mph/4549 kJ

Today's route was a bit dispiriting.

We ride 175 miles in temperatures up to the mid-90s. Spend nearly 11 hours out there. And guess what? We essentially made no forward progress.

See course (MapSource and Google Earth):

We've gone south (not east). Basically, we paralleled the Mississippi River today.

Apart from that, I had a decent ride.

Each morning, after Brad Haslam's accident, there are three (self-selected) groups that go out one minute apart.

Today, I went out with the fast group (normally I go with the middle group) because Tom and Terri Schwartz were on the tandem. I reckoned it was worth trying to hang with the fast group on the rollers until the first water stop. This I accomplished.

I skipped the stop. I rode by myself until I was caught by a 2nd group. Tom and Terri had swapped their tandem for single bikes. Chris Block from Massachusetts and Eric Hallam from Colorado were also in this group. We swapped pulls over the rollers until mile 107 to the lunch stop. Average speed was around 19 mph. I felt happy I was able to hang in, given that I needed 275W-300W to stay in contact on each roller. Profile:

After lunch, Chris and I rode the remaining 70 miles together. More precisely, I was dying a slow death trying to follow his wheel.
I believe Chris is riding very strongly: an observation confirmed by the fact Chris finished with the leaders yesterday . Fortunately, after the last water stop, he led the remaining 20 miles or so at an easy pace.

Notes:

• Lon fashioned a chain watcher for me out of a hose clamp and a u-shaped piece of metal. Ingenuity at the PacTour trailer. Plus as he put it: it's only a dollar's worth of parts:

• Every night I have to recharge multiple devices, otherwise no juice in the morning. Here, we have the SRM powermeter, batteries for the Garmin GPS receiver, and the white cord for the Macbook.

  
  Some nights it gets even more complicated. I also have to charge my cellphone and the Olympus 720SW digital camera as well.