Ian Pietz's Page

The morning is starting slow. It's 5am. No light outside, the smell of fresh wax on the gym floor. Another day in the Ride:Well tour, another place to wake in the morning. It's our second night in Texas and the parking lot next to us has gas pump fenced in. Today's ride is to be 105 miles. I'm not sure I'm up to it. I'm so tired. Last night the lights were on and the floor was hard. I barely slept. We load up the van, eat or breakfast and are on the road by 6:30am. It's barely light. The…

Today woke up feeling sore. Mild whiplash from a fall, swollen hip and knee. I got going slow... just wanting to give myself plenty of time to warm up.

At the first water stop I shifted into my lowest gear and promptly broke off my derailure. I didn't just break it off though. It jammed into my spokes, got all bent up and split into pieces. Not fixable. Jacob let me use his bike. Terrel is just one size different from mine so we just switched my pedals over and…

We road into Chandler yesterday. I was running "sweep" with Erin. Basically we stay behind the group and make sure everyone gets fixed up or has extra water, or whatever they need to keep going. I'd heard it was not really a fun job, but it turned out to be a great time. I'm sure that was partly because the weather didn't get that hot, and the group was moving along pretty quickly, but mostly I enjoyed it because every time Dustin had a flat I made fun of him.. and I had a water…

So far the trip has been lifechanging. I don't say that lightly either. We had my first century ride on Thursday. It was awesome! 116 miles across the desert. We were flying down the road. Very few problems at all. It was good to get to talk to the team. We had to go through a border patrol checkpoint on our way towards Gila Bend. The Canadian of course told the border patrol guys that he was Canadian, but it was legal for him to be in the USA. They didn't seem to care, and they waved us…