total km: 1767.6
This was a record breaking day for us. Two centurians in one day. We were exhausted, mostly from the heat though. The road from Magrath to Taber was really beautiful. Smooth wide shoulders and almost not traffic allowed to ride side by side while taking in the beauty of the landscape. To top it off we started with a decent tailwind. The last 30km of the 89km to Taber were kind of tough though. The highway cut north which transformed our tail wind into such a strong cross wind that were literally leaning into the yellow line. We still managed to break a speed record though when our direction changed east again just long enough to descend a hill and cross a breathtaking bridge (of which we unfortunately have no pictures). Brandon was flying at 69.2 km/h! And that was without peddaling.
We made it to Taber (our originally proposed overnight destination) by 1:00pm where our route met up with highway 3 which lined up absolutely perfectly with the strongest tailwind we had ever seen. It was too good to pass up, and so we headed to Medicine Hat 115km away. We shot out of Taber and covered 35km in our first hour! Another record for us. We continued on at a fairly decent pace and made it from Taber to Medicine Hat in a total of 5.5 hours. The sun was pretty fierce though, and this being the prairies, there's very little in the way of shade. By our 10th hour of riding we were in dire need of shade. Finding none available in the small "towns" we finally found our haven behind a distance billboard. Sorry we were too tired to capture our makeshift rest stop on film, but imagine two kids collapsed within a 7ft square shadow on the side of the highway (we got a lot of encouragment honks).
Just a side note, the world's tallest teepee in Medicine Hat is less than impressive. The big truck is way cooler.
B&K
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