| Ride Stats |
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Distance:
60.88 miles
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Altitude Gain:
3,536 ft
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Avg Speed:
17.40 mph
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Route:
Ride for Refuge
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Avg Grade: 0 %
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Max Grade: 0 %
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Max HR: 128 bpm
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Avg HR: 157 bpm
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Terrain: Road: Hills
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Bike: custom built Cipollini RB800 Road
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Club: Schuyler County Cycling Club |
| Weather Conditions: Rain 68 F NW wind @ 9 mph |
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Today's event was a metric century the Ride for Refuge east of Erie, PA. Although we lucked out yesterday by missing the rain, today we paid for that luck with buckets of rain. It was raining steadily during registration but let up at the eight AM starting time. We had a grand total of six riders that lined up for the metric. I believe there were quite a few riders that waited for the rain to subside before they started. Doug and I actually finished before some riders started. We talked to one of the locals who said the course was fairly flat and that he rode it all the time. Several times during the ride I wanted to find him and slap him as the course was anything but flat. Doug and I rolled off the front at a fairly easy pace considering it was on a downgrade with a tailwind, but none of the other riders joined us. Weather forecast said we should get two hours relatively rain free. Weather forecast was wrong, as it started raining again ten minutes into the ride. I had failed to shut off my bike computer after yesterday's warm down ride and it had stayed on during the drive until the battery ran out. So today I was without my handy aid, but at least I had my Garmin watch that showed my mileage and speed. We looked back after a couple of miles into the ride and it appeared a rider was trying to bridge up to us. He never made it though as we were soon climbing upwards into the rain. For the first hour Doug and I hammered our way up seemingly endless short climbs. We pretty much just tried to hold our speed over the top and coast down the back sides. Drafting was out with the rain and wet roads as it wasn't worth the extra soaking. Back started to tighten up after the first hour. We were riding hard just to keep the average around seventeen. Doug said we had only ascended eight hundred feet, though I assumed we had climbed twice that. I was riding far harder than I had in yesterday's race. Neither the rollers nor the rain would not give us a break, and we pretty much suffered through the second hour the same as we had the first. I finally gave in around the forty mile mark and backed off the pace and Doug gapped me on a small climb. I was more concerned on finding a suitable location to take a nature break than holding the pace anymore. Doug waited over the top, and I told him I had to stop and he need not wait for me as I could not hold his pace much longer anyway. Took my break and actually felt better as either the drained bladder or the brief rest had lessened my back pain. I was able to hammer back up to Doug in a couple of miles and we continued on over further rollers in the rain. We finally got over the last ridge and headed back downward toward Lake Erie around the forty five mile mark. We stopped at a rest stop at the fifty mile mark in what I believe was the Hamlet of Northeast, PA. We stuffed ourselves with chocolate chip cookies and noted that the rain had finally ceased. The last few miles was relatively easy and fairly fast as we leap frogged between slower riders from the shorter routes. The sky actually lightened up a little, and although we never saw the sun you could almost see where it should be. It turned out to be a hard day on the bike with the rain making everything more difficult. There was also a nasty wind but between the endless rollers and drenching rain it was barely a nuisance. Never saw the guy that said it was a fairly flat course. Finished the Labor Day's event soaking wet and pretty beat up.
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