I had originally planned to relax this Saturday, but with
enough cajoling, ended up doing the 50-mile (52.5 mile) Princeton Freewheelersride with two of my tri club buddies. In
addition, my earlier excuse of “I have a race the next day” went out the window
because the two ladies I rode with were also doing the same race!
We planned to meet at 8am, which was a nice change from the
usual 6am Saturday wakeup calls. I got
to the Mercer County Community College parking lot by 8 and walked over to the
race-day registration table. I paid my
$35 (no t-shirt for race-day registration) and got a wristband for the
post-ride lunch. It was around 8:30 by
the time we started riding, and it was a gorgeous day.
Within the first five miles, I lost a bottle full of
CarboPro, and since I had replaced my seatpost with the RedShift seatpost the
night before, I guess I didn’t fully retighten the rear bottle cage
holder. It must have gotten jarred when
I lost my bottle (which i subsequently ran over), and fell down against the
back tire. I didn’t have any tools with
me, but we pulled into a parking lot and my friend flagged down a Good Samaritan Biker who let me borrow
his. A few miles after that, I was
slowing down at a red light, but didn’t unclip my left foot. I figured I’d just put my right foot down for
a second if the light didn’t change right away.
Unfortunately my bike (and I) was leaning to the left. I slow-mo fell to the ground and got a little
road rash on my left knee, and bruising where the bike pedal slammed into my
leg. Ouch.
The following miles leading up to the first rest stop were
pretty uneventful. We met some new
friends during that ride, including a guy from our tri club (Floyd) and a train
conductor (What up Uncle Ernie?!). By
the time we got to the first stop, I was STARVING. I grabbed some food, drank about two bottles
of Gatorade, and had my road rash cleaned up.
The volunteers were very friendly, and the rest stop was well stocked. The second rest stop was at mile 41 (I
think), just before a giant hill.
Thankfully we didn’t have to go up that hill, since the course turned
back the other way. Overall the ride was
52.5 miles, and took about 3:30-ish hours.
I was so happy to get off the bike.
I hadn’t ridden over 12 miles since my June 20 half iron race, so I was
a little unconditioned for it.
After loading our bikes back in our cars, we grabbed some of
the catered lunch before heading home.
Overall, it was a fun ride and I’m glad I did it. The course was relatively flat with enough
rolling hills to keep it interesting, the roads were pretty well marked
(spray-painted colored arrows), and the weather really cooperated with us. I do wish there had been more rest stops, but
then again, it was only $35, so you couldn’t really expect a ton of
amenities. Also, there were a lot of
traffic lights in the beginning of the ride, but I guess you can’t totally
avoid that!
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