100 mile ride

It's hard to know whether to brag about a 15-hour 100-mile ride. I watched Ymte Sijbrandij ride about 93 miles in three hours this spring, and Fast Freddy Markham went over 50 miles in an hour this summer. The guys in the Tour de France put in 100+ miles day after day. Still, I'm happy to be able to ride 100 miles in one day. This year, I did the ride on the day before my birthday because of the opportunity to combine it with two group rides. The St. Paul Classic normally attracts some 7000 riders, but a cold drizzle kept some of the crowds away this year. The Calhoun Cycle recumbent ride has exceeded 100 riders, but only a couple dozen showed up, and the ride was shortened. I rode our Greenspeed 20/20 GTO trike, averaging about 10 miles per hour, including rest stops, on the 30-mile route of the Classic. Dale and I rode over to Calhoun Cycle in the Cab-Bikes, getting in about 4 miles, but he had a sore foot, and I decided to switch back to the Greenspeed for further riding. The Cab-Bike felt slow and heavy after riding the Greenspeed. Oddly enough, I was actually not riding any slower, but open trikes just feel so fast. I didn't want to stress my knees on the hills by trying to keep up with lighter bikes. As it ended up, I missed the group and met them on the return loop. The last quarter of the 100-miles, I rode on the lake paths. Normally, they feel completely flat, but the little rises felt like mountains, and my speed dropped below 10 mph by the end of the ride. The odometer on the Greenspeed showed just over 100 miles when I pulled into the driveway. I had calculated that there was probably a 4% error, though; I figured that the 4 Cab-Bike miles would provide a guarantee that it was really a 100-mile day.

100 miles

For the past two years, I've biked 100 miles on September 11. In 2004, it was in the Cab-Bike (see the photos; the odometer reads in kilometers), but in 2005, I used three different bikes. Riding a hundred miles takes me all day. I've only done it twice so far. It seemed like a good way to give my birthday a different focus after the events of 2001. This year, I'm planning to start the ride on September 10 and just finish it after midnight on the eleventh. There are two rides on the tenth that I didn't want to miss. The St. Paul Classic is a 7000-person tour of car-free streets in St. Paul, with plenty of music, food, and socializing. Riding there and back will bring that morning event to 50 miles. In the afternoon, Calhoun Cycle hosts a recumbent ride with as many as 100 riders that will add another 35 or 40 miles. A couple rounds of some local lakes will bring the total to 100. I'll probably start on a Greenspeed GTO trike, switch to the Cab-Bike for the Calhoun Cycle event, and end up with a 1959 Raleigh three-speed or a Brompton/Junik recumbent folder.