Today was the annual
Ididaride - Adirondack bike tour. This is the third year I have done it and it keeps getting bigger. This year over 300 riders. This is one of my favorite organized ride. They do a great job, it is a challenging course - 75 miles and 6800' of climbing and almost no flat terrain.
The ride starts from the North Creek Ski Bowl where they set up food & drinks for the morning and a big BBQ at the end.
The start was at 8:30AM and quickly gets into the first climb - a long 10 mile ascent.
This is the first rest area after the climb.
I waited here a bit for my friends to show up. We had gotten spread out at the start.
The next rest stop I hit was in Indian Lake just about 17 miles from the finish. I was riding with a pretty fast group and we did not stop at the second rest area or the last. Note the brand new (5 days old) Trek Project bike in white, of course I was riding the 15 YO steel Simoncini resting up against the sign.
Last year I was lucky and found someone to ride with & draft for most of the ride, this year I was a little faster, not quite fast enough for the best riders but not slow enough to stick with the next pack back. For most of the ride I was solo with no opportunity to draft. The average for this year was 17.1 with a max speed of 47mph on the last descent. I actually think my average last year was within a tenth or so - but again, I had a few other riders to share the work load - I just couldn't get it together this year.