Muse back!
April 05, 2008 / Saturday
Cinderella Classic
After finally completing a half century last month, I turned my road bike attention to the next item on my list: a metric century (~62.1 miles for you imperialists). I'd originally planned to tackle this after the mountain bike race, but then last week at evals I was chatting with Lindsay and she mentioned that she was doing this ride. "You should come," she said, "it's fun." I figured since I wanted to do a metric century next anyhow, this women-only, tiaras-encouraged ride would be a fun choice. The ride was sold out, but Craigslist came through with a ticket as usual and I joined Lindsay and her roommate bright and early (7 AM, oof!) to head over to the Alameda County Fairgrounds.
I'd expected to complete the ride in just over four hours, but it ended up taking just over five. There were riders everywhere, and a lot of them were slow; it wasn't until the second half of the ride that we got clear of the crowds to ride at a decent pace.
They fed us well, we had random adoring fans along side of the road, and some guy handed out lemon drops at the top of one of the hills. Just before that hill, a speedy little chick with huge calves blew by me. I rode my ass off and caught her just after the lemon drop man. I turned around and saw that Lindsay had kept up with me the whole way, and she apparently didn't find it very difficult, because soon after that she took off and I didn't see her again until the next rest station. The only surprising thing about that was she didn't do it sooner.
As with the Solvang ride, my left knee started aching around mile 40. I popped a couple Aleve when we reached the rest stop around mile 42, but they didn't help much. Whatever. Screw knee pain. Onward! When we reached mile 50, I grinned a big huge grin; this was now my longest ride ever.
The last 10 miles wound us through the area near where I work. It was neat to see it from a bicycle.
Finally, we got back to the fairgrounds and rolled into the start area. 64.7 miles according to the course map; 63.1 miles according to my slightly inaccurate bike odometer. Either way you slice it, a metric century. Huzzah!
Comments
Hooray!
Posted by: Mike at April 6, 2008 05:45 AM