Being a host house for riders participating in the 2011 Saint Francis Tulsa Tough

TULSA - Nearly 5,000 riders are expected to participate in this weekend's Tulsa Tough events, and many of them will be from out of town.

Some of them will stay with friends, some with family, and some in hotels. But there are also host houses in Tulsa for the riders to stay.

Channel 2 Controller Cara Palmer and her husband agreed to host three of this weekend's racers. They arrived late this week, and from what Cara wrote, it looks like it's going to be a great experience.

When my husband and I were asked to be a host house for Tulsa Tough, we didn't immediately say yes.

We had to think about it for a while because we're used to having our house all to ourselves and weren't sure how we'd feel about having strangers going in and out.

According to the host housing guidelines, the hosts are to provide a place to sleep, a place to shower/clean up and a place to store bicycles and gear.

OK, we thought, we can do that.

Plus, we have always enjoyed watching the races, we have friends who are involved with Tulsa Tough and we thought if we could contribute to it's success in any way, we wanted to. Also, we're usually up for a new experience.

In order to prepare for our guests my husband first of all had to finish the roof on our new storage shed so that we could make room in
the garage for the bikes.

Besides cleaning the house from top to bottom, we also had to clean out the refrigerator to make room for our guests' food (lots of food as I would find out later).

Since we don't cook at home very often that was the easiest part.

Our guests are three female racers, one from Colorado, one from California and one from Utah.

They arrived Thursday night with a car load.

Who would've thought? They travel with their bikes in giant boxes that they can check at the airport, and then put them together at their destination.

After unloading and putting their bike boxes in the garage and their bags in their rooms, they headed out to Whole Foods to buy their groceries.

When they got back from the store we were shocked at the amount of food they bought!

They had more food for three days than we buy for three weeks!

They have to have a lot of fuel to keep those athletic bodies going.

After putting their food away they went to work in the kitchen like machines preparing their meal.

I was fortunate. They shared their meal with me and I got to know them better over a very delicious and very healthy dinner.

They're interesting women. In fact, two of them previously had high-powered jobs in the corporate world before leaving the rat race to race full time.

On Friday, our guests will put their bicycles together in our garage, go ride for a couple of hours and get coffee.

They said they'd probably relax at home in the air conditioning for the afternoon before heading out for the first race in the blue dome district later that night.

They are very nice and lovely women who are very gracious. I look forward to getting to know them better over the weekend.

And, it'll be even more fun to watch the races this year because we will have new friends to root for!

If you'd like to volunteer to help out with the Tulsa Tough just go to their website, www.tulsatough.com.

The races began Friday and go through the weekend.