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14th Annual The Spin Cycle 4th of July Firecracker 100K and 50K Ride (Cary, NC)
I have gotten permission for skaters to participate in a local 50k/100k cycling ride in Cary, NC on July 4th... Information can be found here:
http://www.thespincycle.com/events.asp?level1=4thRide%20Info
The cycling club was a bit hesitant to allow skating, as there had been an "incident" in the past. However, they were open to consider it again, and have agreed to let us participate and see how it goes. Note that our behavior at this event will directly affect our ability to attend other events put on by this bike shop and cycling club.
Also, there are a few rules that skaters must adhere to (these are to prevent a repeat of the "incident" from years past.)
- Skaters must obey all traffic laws, particularly staying on the correct side of the road. (Note - this is something they've specifically called out for the cyclists too -- apparently there is a tendency for them to cross the center line when moving up in the pack, etc...)
- Skaters must never touch a cyclist -- the "incident" involved a skater touching a cyclist when slowing down, I think.
- Skaters must not draft off cyclists. I agreed to this restriction so that we could participate, but told the organzier I would like to revisit it in the future once we establish that we are in fact safe skaters.
- Skaters must be able to stop effectively -- heel brakes are encouraged, but if you're willing to flat-spot a set of wheels to do a hard t-stop, so be it. Basically, we need to be able to stop to obey the various traffic laws and also be able to slow down and stop among the cyclists if necessary.
This should open up some more events for us to participate in, assuming it goes well. Except for the "no drafting" part, this isn't any different than the guidelines we use for the weekly skate in Apex. Registration is fairly inexpensive ($25), with half of that going to MS Society. There is also going to be a cheap buffet offered at the end, and 3 rest stops on the 100k route.
I plan on signing up... Hopefully we'll have a good group of skaters there to represent the Triangle, Triad, and.... ???
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Comments
Spin Cycle Firecracker Rocks
The ride was awesome today!
The group was escorted out of Cary by police and many of the smaller intersections had police cars holding the traffic for bicycles (and skaters! :-) ). Since Tom and I were doing only 32 miles we found ourselves surrounded by a bunch of cyclists which was both good and bad. It was good 'cause I was making new friends all over the place - a lot of people were asking about the Tour to Tanglewood since I was wearing the 2005 T2T jersey... And of course, I could not pass an opportunity to talk to girls that were passing me once in a while :-))) Tip for the future: going on shorter skrides results in much "prettier" rest stops if you know what I mean :-)
Now, speaking of bad things about skating with a bunch of bicycles, it is downhills. The cyclists just do not understand that we go faster then them and tend to get in front of skaters and start breaking (argh!)... I found myself breaking on many nice downhills just so I don't run into any cyclists (and not cause a new ban for skaters on this ride).
Anyway, the first 15.5 miles were a breeze where most of the roads were nice and people around were smiling and energetic :-) On the second half of the ride Tom and myself went through a nice rolling terrain for the first 3-5 miles reaching about 24mph sustained speed on flats (where the surface was not great though). However, the last 10 miles consisted of about 6-7 miles uphill and more rolling hills afterwards... Since I felt fairly strong I took off and finished the ride with an average speed of 12.7mph. The speed is not as good as I was hoping for but new boots, smaller wheels and hills definitely took some wind out of my sail :-)
On the upside, the pain in forefeet that I was having in the past few months never came on this ride so I think that I am gonna be sticking with the new boots using my Bonts as a spare from now on.
Overall, a great ride, nice roads, challenging uphills, a little bit of lace bite and a lot of fun :-)))
100k rocked too! :)
Well, let me just say first that if I'm in town for this next year, I'll definitely do it again. Despite being HOT HOT HOT, this was a great event...
Dave & I started out a wee bit fast on the 100k route and decided to slow the pace down a tad, right around the first rest stop... I think we averaged around 16mph to the first rest stop, then around 15.5 mph to the 2nd one... Things were still going quite well... Pavement was very good, with some pleasant surprises in areas that Dave thought were going to be rough turned out to be not too bad... I was already getting pretty hot in my skinsuit, and opted to peel off the top part. I also took off my hand sliders, as having something on my hands in the heat seems to really make it a lot worse for me... Having much more surface area of skin exposed to air made a pretty big difference in my comfort level, although it wouldn't last forever... :)
Soon, we were in familiar territory of Apex and hit the last rest stop -- our usual gas station stop at the end of Beaver Creek. This was about the time that it was getting really HOT... I think we were still averaging around 15mph at that point.
We left and soon we got to the dreaded Marthas Chapel Road. Dave & I had skated this road before, so we knew it was going to be bad. This time it was different though -- scorching heat and little shade, not to mention we were about 50 miles into a 62-mile skate. It pretty much sucked... That went on for 3 miles or so, then we got a brief respite on highway 751, and then more gatorback. Maybe another 2-3 miles. That was really the heartbreaker there...
Eventually the gatorback ended, and we were cruising into Cary. We came up to the intersection of Highway 55 and High House Road which had a CVS. Dave had the AWESOME idea of stopping there for some cool drinks. Fortunately they didn't hassle me about not having a shirt on (I suppose I could have pulled the top of my skinsuit back on, but my brain wasn't working quite right then...) We basked in the A/C for several minutes and got some ice-cold gatorade in us, which cooled down the impending heat exhaustion. At this point, we had about 6 miles left -- and some fairly decent hills left to climb.
We trudged on and eventually made it to the finish, and saw our own personal cheering section (Tom & Artem) waiting for us. Speed for the last section -- about 13 mph...
Definitely do this event next year if you can...