Category: ride

Yesterday, I rode the Ride Deaf Challenge metric century.  It was very chilly at the start. Not just the temperature, but the wind.  Also, it didn’t help that for 15 of the first 20 miles, I had a very full bladder which made climbing torture. Temp 50-68°F (didn’t reach 60°F until last 8 miles), strong wind from NW (meaning headwind for first 36 miles), max grade 5.7%, 1323 ft of climbing, HRM zones 3-5 2:56. 64.93mi (104.49 km) in 4:19:16, avg speed 15.03mph (24.19 km/h), max speed 28.5 mph (45.9 km/h).

This is a ride I’ve never done before.  They run 3 distances, a metric century (actually 60.6), an 80 miler, and a century.  I chose to ride the metric.  It was very humid today, by far the most humid ride of the year, the fog took over an hour to burn off, temp 68-86F, wind from NE @ 7, max grade 4.1%, HRM zones 3-5 3:11. 60.61 mi (97.54 km) in 3:44:34, avg – 16.19 mph (26.06 km/h), max speed – 32.1 mph (51.7 km/h). My goal was to complete the ride in under 4 hours and I accomplished that with plenty of time to spare.

I went out with every intention of riding the metric century despite the encounter with the deer earlier this week (maybe I’ll do a separate blog post on that later), but when I heard thunder at the 24mi food stop and my knee was beginning to stiffen up, I decided discretion was the better part of valor and decided to try to beat the rain back to the finish (which I did), so I ended up doing the 47 miler again (for the 3rd year in a row).  I actually really like the ride and it is pretty flat.  This year, despite the crash earlier this week and being even heavier than last year (by 2+ lbs, making this the heaviest I’ve ever been for an organized ride 🙁 ), I shaved another 3:23 off my time, so I guess I’m in half way decent shape.  The temperature was perfect and I was under an overcast (as the rain tried to catch me) for the last half of the ride, so conditions were nearly ideal.

My 3rd organized ride of the season already.  Of course, having spent the last week at Dad’s to celebrate his 80th birthday, I haven’t gotten any more riding in since the last organized ride (where I already paid dearly for the lack of miles).Temp 62.6-87.8F, moderate wind from S, shifting to W. HRM zones 3-5 3:37. 64.54mi in 4:22:23 (14.76mph). First hour I averaged 14.7mph, 2nd hour – 16.1mph, 3rd hour – 14.6mph, 4th hour – 14.1mph, last 22 min – 12.6mph. I have some words for the sadist who designed the course where nearly half the climbing was in the last 1/4 of the ride. There was a stretch about 10mi from the finish where I felt like a sprinter on Hautecam.

I haven’t ridden anywhere near as much as I had hoped for the last 6 weeks and I really paid for it after the rest stop at 49mi today.  My legs just felt like jello and I ended up losing 0.6mph in that last stretch.  There was more climbing in the first 7.5 miles than what I have in my 30 mile loop (which I’ve only ridden once this year).  The temp ranged from 64°F at the start to reading 95°F at the finish, though it was probably just 89-90°F.  HRM zones 3-5 3:05 though it was a little flaky right after that second rest stop and was reading in the 90s-low 110s for a while when I’m sure it was in the 140-150s. 64.7mi in 4:52:01 for an avg of 13.28mph, max grade 9.6% (even worse than the Lancaster County Covered Bridge Metric from 2012 where max grade was 7.8%, though that had 1200+ more feet of climbing than this one in total).

I rode my last organized ride of the season this morning.  It was called the Ride for Reason, a fundraiser for Alzheimer’s research (if you want to contribute to my effort, you can do so at http://act.alz.org/goto/jclausing).  It was chilly at the start, but nowhere near as cold as the CHA ride last month.  Temp 54-75°F, light wind from the ESE which meant headwind relatively early in the ride.  I have to say, the folks at the Trek store didn’t do a very good job marking the roads for this one.  If I hadn’t uploaded the route onto my GPS, I’m not sure I would have been able to find the route.  I think I can count all the arrows I actually saw on the rode on 1 hand (certainly on both).  They were purple and very difficult to see.  Having said that, it was a great day for a ride and a relatively nice route.  The distance was supposed to be 47 miles because the original ride 25 years ago was 4700 miles, I missed one turn (added less than 0.1) and ended up riding 47.93.  See the details here or below.

And my second organized ride of the season was the Pedal with Pete Cerebral Palsy ride.  Despite rain for the first hour, going 0.6 miles further than last year (due to where I parked) and weighing 10 pounds more than last year, I managed to cut 3 minutes off my time.  It was a fun ride.

http://ridewithgps.com/trips/1558867