Day #1

Well Day #1 of the 2011 Fall Ride is history.  My cyclometer says 68.70 miles with an average of 11.7 MPH.  I can't remember ever having such a low average on any length of ride.  Perhaps the fact that I was occasionally walking the bike up hill accounted for this.  Anyhow my maximum speed was somewhere north of 40 MPH and I did use my brakes a lot.

Mark, Joanne, Bonnie, Cassandra, George with Pilot Mtn in the background

I wanted a group shot with Pilot Mtn in the background so we could prove we were there.  Unfortunately the sun was low in the sky and right behind us so this isn't the greatest picture

The weather, which can always be an issue in October in NC was absolutely perfect.  Bright sunshine, no humidity, temps starting in the high 40's and ending in the low 60's.  We bundled up in the morning and most of us shed something during the day.  Rest stops and frequent intervals helped, the big hill climbs at the end of the day didn't.  

One very nasty stretch of road had recently been paved by the "tar and feathers" method where tar is spread and then stones.  The loose stones are supposed to be swept up after the tar dries.  It looked like they forgot that step.  Anyhow there were piles of loose stone on the road and the hill was a steep and twisting decent. As we started down this stretch we were flagged to slow down by police or ambulance people.  At the bottom of the hill they were loading one very injured looking fellow into an ambulance.  We do not know of his condition but all pray that he is on the mend.

The cue sheets claimed that the total climb for the day would be 2200 feet.  That is just a summation of all the up hills with no subtraction for the coast downhill.  I talked with several riders who have the Garmin Edge GPS on board.  They said that they recorded 4900 feet of climb for the day.  I think Garmin uses an altimeter for this computation where the software CNC uses probably uses contour map data.  I would like to believe the Garmin data.

Several years ago Ken Court gave me a wristwatch heart rate monitor.  I mounted the display next to my cyclometer. I set the alarm to go off at 120 beats per minute.  I had to turn the alarm off before I got out of the hotel parking lot.  I got some pretty scary (to me) readings during the day but I think they were accurate since my resting rate now is 83 which is only 20 over normal.  I set a limit of 160 where I would stop and rest.  Maybe a good sign was toward the end of the day with the most stressful hills, I rarely got over 145.  But I had to stop for other reasons.