Century ride around Indian Head, MD.
~3239 feet of climbing 101.48 Miles, by my computer. *The Bike:* On 53 Rivendell Bleriot - metallic aqua. 41 Noodles. *The Weather:* 60’s-90F? Perfect weather. Sunny and partially cloudy. Not a lot of humidity. Clear air. Beautiful. I wore two wool shirts and wool cycling shorts, cotton socks and Nike Shoes, Summer Gloves, reflective vest. Stripped down to one wool t-shirt as it warmed up. *The Food:* I ate ½ PBJ before leaving the house. I ate ½ PBJ and tomato/mayo sandwich, ½ egg mcmuffin type sandwich, and bananas, during the ride, and some kind of salty dried vege fries at the last rest stop. Drank Thai tea before leaving home, and Gatorade during the ride. *The Background:* I wanted to do the whole 100 this year. I only did the 70mile route of this last year (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/rbw-owners-bunch/indian$20head%7Csort:relevance/rbw-owners-bunch/gJPWltCIzqQ/wOtLARmNAgAJ). *The Ride:* I arrived at the park to plenty of parking and signed in quickly, leaving my bike against a wall outside of the pavilion area. I looked for the bathroom, saw a line, and decided to just start, planning to stop for the porta-john at the first rest stop at mile 17. I started sometime around 7 or 7:15 am. The first miles were fast and through rolling hilly terrain. I remembered some of the route from last year. Someone with a lazer-like blinky was ahead of me. The light was driving me nuts. I just sped up and got ahead and tried to make some distance. Then I settled in for the ride at a nice pace. It was easy to blast up and down the hills. I was wondering if I was going at too fast a rate for the beginning of the ride and thought I should get into a forever pace, but continually found myself going fast at a higher cadence than I am used to. Maybe it was the outlet of all the anticipation and excitement leading up to the ride. I arrived at the first rest stop at a marina and moved through it quickly, eating half of an egg mcmuffin type sandwich and ½ a banana and getting Gatorade refills. I took pics of the bike at the marina. It was very beautiful there. I met someone who owned a nice looking, French, blue, Mercian bike. He said he came from Columbia, a town close to me. He stated that his crank arm wasn't set at a 180 degree angle. But nothing was bent on the bike. And he wondered if that is how the maker intended it to be. I didn't quite understand what the 180 degrees was in relation to. It was nice talking bikes with him, though. I should have invited him to ride with me at home, as we live close to each other. After our brief conversation, we wished each other a good ride and I started off again. Rolling terrain that I got through easily. Happily, I never felt bogged down. I was definitely going faster than I should have so early in the ride (for me), but arrived easily at the 41 mile rest stop. I moved through it quickly and decided to try to just go at an easy pace and use this next leg of the trip as a recovery phase. I kept myself at a rate where I didn’t raise my respiration much at all and this was a nice, relaxing way to ride. Still easy to get up the hills. But eventually I still fell into going faster than I thought I should. My left thigh started getting jumpy whenever I started to spin too fast so I took it easy for a while and got into my usual slowish cadence and high gear riding style that I do around home terrain. For some reason it was easy to go fast (fast for me, which is slow for most, I think, as many people were blowing by me, and my average speed for the ride was not fast at all). Sometimes I looked down at the speedometer and it said 18-20mph on flats. Even flats with a rise if I remember right. So in the excitement it was fun to pedal with high cadence but my left thigh didn’t like it. In my neck of the woods I am a 13-15 mph rider, so it was fun to cruise at 18-20 sometimes here. Somewhere around here I entered the Nanjemoy loop. A 20, or so mile loop that I skipped last year on the 70 mile ride. It was mostly wooded and shady. Two lane road recently paved. Very narrow and fun. It was a very beautiful area to ride through. Later on, there was a short series of downhills and I checked my speed as there were twists and I wasn’t familiar with the roadways here. Someone came up to pass me and I thought it wasn’t wise to do that at such a fast pace and on such a narrow road. Trees, Dappled shade. No dividing line and not sure two cars could pass each other on this road. Then I saw a spray painted caution sign in the roadway, and as I looked up from it after reading it, my eyes fell upon the bottom of the hill which had ankle deep sand/pebbles covering the roadway! Must have been dumped there recently by someone. The aforementioned rider who had just passed me ran the gauntlet first yelling “Noooooo!” as he started through it at full speed. He made it through. Another rider was next to me. Visions of toppling, tangled, bicycle frames ran through my head. I think she also made some desperate cry as we descended upon it. People behind me were yelling. I tried to stay calm and I hoped I would make it through safely. I thank the Lord for helping me to ride right through no problem. I thought that whoever sprayed the caution sign there should have done it much higher up the hill. I wanted to call the ride administrators and tell them they should get someone down there to warn people earlier. With tightly packed groups and 2 abreast riders at 25-30mph it could have been disastrous. I overheard another person state to a riding partner that he hit the patch at 30mph, and also remembered that he had just looked up from the warning sign when he came upon it. Sighs of relief were heard afterwards, and the ride continued as before. Beautiful shaded roadways. A couple of the rest stops towards the end of the ride had steep hills just before them. At the 77 mile rest stop I still felt good. There was a steep, but short, climb just before it which reached into the rest stop at a church. The cemetery in the churchyard overlooks a vast landscape of waterways and is quite scenic. As I ascended, I saw that one rider was walking his bike up the hill, one was grinding laboredly uphill, I think another was getting up from the ground to remount his steed. I spun up in my lowest gear (24 x 30?). I honestly don't know how some of the people cranked up these kneebusting hills on their double cranksets. Stronger than I, for sure. They ran out of jelly for the PBJ sandwiches. No problem I just had peanut butter sandwich. They had Gatorade concentrate, you could pump it into your water bottle, then add water from the coolers. No pre mixed stuff in coolers this year. 2 pumps per bottle was good. I stuck with the lemon lime. The grape wasn’t that tasty. I saw a youth keeping tally and looked like his hash marks were about 40 slashes past where he wrote "550". I guess that meant that was how many riders came through the rest stop so far today. As I returned to my bike from the Gatorade refill, I noticed a man placing his black, VO Randonneur bike against the wall adjacent to mine, and I thought that this just might be the elusive Steve Palincsar that I knew was on some of these local rides, but I had never met. At first I didn't let on my suspicions about who he was, but then he stated that we knew each other from RBW Owner's Group and we warmly greeted each other. Steve had some funny stories from his long past of century rides. We also chatted Rivendell and VO bikes. It was fun to look over his machine and see all the interesting components and the VO frame with standard diameter tubing. We started mounting up and parted company, though we saw each other again briefly at the next rest stop. Starting away from the rest stop, I felt great, and at this point in the ride it got a little hillier and there were some minor headwinds. The rest of the downhills had very good and *early* spray painted signs on the street. They were great. There were a couple twisty downhills but easily managed. Fun to ride. I kept my speed in check. But didn’t have to brake too much or hard at all. This is really a fun Century course. During the ride there were swampy and boggy areas that were beautiful. I saw a white egret or heron, not sure which it was, off in the distance. Looked like rolling roads through mostly undeveloped farmland and swampy areas. Very fun ride and interesting things to see. The roadways were new and smooth, and sometimes rough, but never bad roads. Last year a rider mentioned that the Nanjemoy loop was pretty bad, and Steve confirmed this. But this year the roadway looked as if it had just been resurfaced. So that was very nice riding there. I wondered how the Rambouillet would have felt on the rough parts with the 28mm tires I have on it, though. The Bleriot had 38’s on it and felt great the whole time. The ride was great fun the whole time and my energy was up the whole time. Started getting a little tired after the last rest stop. If I remember correctly, much of the route was shaded. After the last rest stop (no icees this time, I think they had Italian ice or something last time.) it was a short ride of a few miles over to the rail trail, for the last 5 or so miles before reaching the park where the finish was. At one point the forest opened up to reveal the beautiful Mattawoman creek (?)waterway. Boggy with treelines. Pics are in the link below. I think it was the most crowded event ride besides the Seagull Century (~8,000 riders) I have been on. Felt more crowded than last year. Moreso than the Covered Bridges Metric Century (https://www.flickr.com/gp/70237737@N00/2779K1). It was well supported and the volunteers were very cheerful and friendly. I think someone said about 1,000 people registered. My suggestion would be that maybe they should discourage pacelines like the Covered Bridges Metric Century does. There were lots of them. Most passed politely on my left, and that was nice of them. But at one point I was engulfed by the peloton on both sides and I cringed with elbows tucked in tightly, thankful I only had 41cm wide drop bars, as riders passed me closely on both sides shouting "On your left, "On your right". That is just not in good form. I don't remember which bike club/s they were from. As they passed and regrouped in front of me I counted 4 abreast. Other than that, it was a fantastic ride, and I look forward to doing it again next year. And the price is nice, too. Plus it is not too far from home. The ride was fun and interesting the whole way. I thoroughly enjoyed it and had such a great time. Seemed easy to go fast and up and down the hills easily. Became more interesting with swampy areas and the downhills as the ride went on. I geared down to my lowest gear about 5 times for the toughest hills. 7.6% grade was the steepest according to Ride withGPS. But they were all easy to get up in the low gear. So it is a good century to try if you want to try something with a little climbing, but not something that will kill you. Makes for very pleasant ride. I am so thankful to the Lord for giving me this wonderful ride and keeping me so strong and safe and comfortable the whole time. What a wonderful day on the bike! Pics here, enjoy! : https://www.flickr.com/gp/70237737@N00/x578P1 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
