66 Miles on Route 66 at 66 Years Old

I got the idea from a post on a Facebook page to ride my bike 66 miles on Route 66 while I'm 66 years old. Randy was also planning to go, but he crashed into a heavy black aluminum pole on the Mountain View Corridor trail when he was training for this ride at night about a month ago. He broke his clavicle and three ribs and injured his spleen. But he wanted to go anyway, so he became my support for this ride.

The pipe Randy hit at about 30 mph when he was training for our 66 on 66 at 66 ride. This is a heavy 4-foot-high, 5" aluminum pipe that wasn't broken before he hit it. 

 I rode west from Seligman to Anatares. The wind usually blows west to east, so for that this wasn't the best direction, but it was overall downhill. 

This is across the street from Delgadillo's Snow Cap, where I started. 

I climbed about 1,118 feet and descended 2,673. I averaged 18 miles per hour for the first 55 miles. Then I hit a headwind (probably 10-15 mph), a mild ascent, and tired legs that dropped my overall average speed to 17.1 mph. The road had a wide shoulder for most of the way, but there were about 5 to 10 miles with no shoulder. Overall, the road surface was pretty rough. I'm not sure if it was chip seal or just a worn-out road, with one section of smooth pavement. Oftentimes, the cracked shoulder with grass growing through was smoother than the roadway. The painted white stripe was the smoothest, except when it had a crack down the middle. I don't usually ride on highways with cars, because I'm not a fan of being run over, so I bought a Garmin Varia that uses radar to notify me when a vehicle approaches from the rear. That was very helpful. When a car was approaching, I moved well onto the shoulder. The speed limit on this section of Route 66 was 65 mph. A few cars were easily doing 80 mph or higher. The traffic was light. There were very few semis (long-haul truckers take I-40). Most drivers moved completely into the oncoming lane when they passed, but a few did not. At one point, a car, motorhome, and car passed me. The two cars moved over, but the motorhome didn't move over at all. 

• I did the 66 miles in 3:51:47. I was really happy to have finished in under 4 hours. 
• Average speed: 17.1 mph.
• Maximum speed: 36.42 mph.
• Average cadence: 85 (exactly my target; yay).
• Average heart rate: 122 bpm (I'm on a beta blocker that keeps it slow; before the heart attack in July, my average would have been more like 140-145 bpm on this ride).