Making Vast Improvements!

Since we have been having problems with tons of red flags and slow bike riding we were looking for ways to improve.  While we know that it is impossible to bike every single mile, we still want to bike every mile that we can!  So last night we had a meeting to try and decide the best ways to improve our efficiency on the bike as a team.  One major issue that kept coming up is that the strong riders kept together and the weak riders kept together.  We decided that we needed to mix up the stronger and weaker riders more so that we would have less red flags and the pace lines would wouldn’t get so spread out.  So we split the strong, medium, and weak skill level riders up and mixed them all together to make our pace lines.  And it shocked us all how much we improved.  From yesterday to today it was a night and day difference.  The pace lines were staying close together, everyone was biking harder, there were no red flags, and everything was running so much smoother!  And it was a perfect day to be clicking so well together because we had 115 miles to ride to Pullman, WA!!  This was the longest of the trip so far and for most of us it was the most miles we have biked in one ride! We did so well that we beat rack point  by over an hour and we made it all 115 miles to lodging without having to rack!  It was a huge team booster and you could tell how excited and pumped everyone was.  We all helped each other through it and pushed each other to finish.  It was amazing how 22 people that just met each other nine days ago were working so well and hard together to encourage each other to finish the ride.  It was the first century that we have finished and you could tell that the spirits of the team were high.  Today showed us all that we have what it takes and it definitely brought us more together as a team.  It was an amazing ride!!  After the ride we all went to lodging and got ready for another friendship visit.  We got there and they had karaoke and pizza for us.  So naturally after we got done eating we started singing and dancing with the kids.  We all had a great time!  By the time we got back to lodging we were all exhausted and it was safe to say it was the best sleep we got all summer.  Overall it was a huge milestone day for the Journey of Hope Trans America Team today!!