Northern California - Tour de Peninsula

Is anybody here planning to do the Tour de Peninsula (http://www.rhodyco.com/touredep.htm) on August 5?

I saw a poster in a local shop tonight and did a web search. It looks like fun and is for a good cause (San Mateo County Parks).

Sounds like a lot of fun! I wonder if a new roadie will be able to hang?

I think many folks are doing the Marin/Mt Tam Century on the 4th. Why don't you do that ride?

Very confusing ... almost thought this was the Giro di Peninsula ... anyways, been here, done it many times. I'm doing Mt. Tam Century anyways.

A new roadie could handle the Tour de Peninsula for sure. I'll be at that event, this year, next year I'll be at Tam.

There are different routes for all of these events, so if you're worried about finishing, then just take a route you're comfortable with and go for a cruise.

Bummer I wont have my NorCal jersey for this one, but such are things and there will always be other rides, there is always Sept. too :)

I might be doing it, haven't signed up yet but a friend of mine said he was doing it so I'll probably join him.

I rode this route today. Wasn't bad at all, there are some really fun and fast descents, especially Edgewood Rd.

Ralston wasn't as bad as people said it would be, but the traffic on that road FLYS!! and the bike lane dies off half way up the hill, so you're a little exposed. I hope they close off a lane of that or something.

The route I was looking at took me down the Sawyer camp trail. This thing was congested with walkers/runners/rollerbladers and cyclist. This may be a little bit of a bottleneck, but then again, they use it all the time for events so maybe they'll have it sectioned off or something.. (hopefully).

Overall a nice fun little 33mi. blaster. The course has some rollers that let you keep momentum pretty good so its overall pretty fun.

Hope to see some of you BFers out there. All others, good luck on Tam. :)

I had a great time. We had nice weather for the ride - cool with some light precipitation around the northern part of the route near Millbrae (just enough for those of us wearing glasses to wish we had windshield wipers).

I had a great time today too. The weather really cooperated on this years tour. I believe it stayed right around the 60's the whole ride. I read the past few years temps hit the 90's. I don't think I would have been able to keep up the pace I set today with that kind of heat.

That first climb to "Mt Neverest" was quite painful and unexpectedly long. But the bombing run down the opposite side made it well worth it. :D Surprisingly I didn't see too many people walking their bikes up those hills. And I was quite surprised that I didn't have to dismount either. Must be the really cool weather again. I did have to fake a brake inspection before this one climb up to a reservoir path in Sawyer Trail. I was completely out of breath and when I saw how steep that was I just had to stop.

This was my first time on any of the routes and I will have to say that some of the scenery were spectacular. I might just have to ride some of those again in the near future.

I tracked the route in routeslip.com (http://www.routeslip.com/routes/56781) and according to it there was approx 2600 ft of climbing. :eek: No wonder my legs are really sore right now. I just hope this particular pain is gain. ;)

Glad you guys had a great time on the tour. Sounds like fun.

I was going south along Cañada about 11:45 or 12:00 when there was a rush of emergency vehicles going the other way. Anybody know what happened? I saw one rider down but already being attended to. What were the rest of the vehicles for?

My wife and I rode through that area at approximately the same time. We saw two people down, being attended to. My wife said that she saw a secondary incident in a group of people approaching the congested area where the accident originally occured.

It's sad that people got hurt on this event. Which brings me to the thing I was most uncomfortable about regarding the event - I don't claim to be an exceedingly experienced cyclist - I only got seriously back into this about 6 months ago, but I've been riding almost every day since. But there were a lot of very inexperienced riders out there, judging by the very slow, wobbly climbs, unpredictable moves, etc. - And the way the event started - holding the course closed until 8:30, and then "metering" people onto the course, kept the density pretty high. "Metering" seemed to be let a couple hundred go, wait a couple minutes, and let a couple hundred more go. Which rapidly merged into a solid stream of riders. The combination of inexperience and high rider density made it pretty exciting at times!

Perhaps traffic control and permits required the organizers to operate like that; however, other events that I've attended had both registration and course open from 6:30 to 8:30, and the somewhat random arrival of participants seemed to spread things out a bit. As an early bird, I'd get pretty clear roads.

Perhaps this is to be expected for such a fairly flat course - I guess I learned something today too!

I had a good time.. I went in the first group and took off ahead of the slower people in that group - so I never really experienced the congestion you're talking about. I heard there were some incidents but with the pace we were keeping and since we started in the first group there weren't many inexperienced cyclists that I could see. I did a routeslip of the route and ended up with 3100 feet of climbing, but there was a guy on our route with a forerunner so maybe he can say what the total climbing was.

We were in that group where the lady just fell off her bike. A friend was traumatized by the event since it happened right in front of him. We were strolling along at around 12mph and BAAAAM, the lady who is probably in her 70's, just fell of her bike. We were guessing that maybe she had a stroke or something.
Anyways, if somebody could point me to a link or news that she is okay, please post it here so I can tell my friend that everything is okay. It might help him some get it off of his head.
Thank you in advance...
-gas

My brother and I rode this ride. For me it was a recovery ride from the Mt. Tam century. For him it was a chance to get some road riding in since he does mostly mountain biking.

We got to the school around 8:20am and I was blown away by the thousands of cyclists all lined up waiting to be let out onto the course. I have only done two other organized rides and they have both let cyclists go in small waves rather than queue everybody up at once.

The ride was scheduled to start at 8:30am but we didn't actually hit the road until 9am because of how long it took to let all the riders out in waves. The first few miles were a little frustrating because it was so crowded. We were riding along at 8-9 mph and there just weren't any opportunities to pass. Once the bike traffic thinned out somewhat, there were still a lot of slower riders who were not keeping to the right. Because we were so far back in the pack, it didn't really become uncongested until halfway through the ride at the end of the Sawyer Camp trail. Even then my brother and I were passing people non stop the whole route back although this was actually very fun since there was enough room to pass at this point :)

The congestion aside, this was a fun ride and it was neat to be part of such a huge group of bikes. I also liked the novelty of blowing through four way stops due to the traffic flagging people controlling them. Next year I would try to get there much earlier though and secure a spot in line closer to the front.

I heard someone fell pretty bad near edgewood and had to be lifted out by chopper...any news on that?

Any way, it was a very disappointing ride for me because I got a flat--I didn't have a pump but someone was nice enough to help out but unfortunately (the tube got pinched somehow and that blew up as well).

Ahh well...there'll be next year.

Wish I could of made it, had a good time last year. If you look at the ad with the picture from last year I am the guy in the middle with the fox MTB jersey sitting/chilling/pondering.

http://www.rhodyco.com/07_tdp_images/postridpic.jpg

I heard someone fell pretty bad near edgewood and had to be lifted out by chopper...any news on that?

Any way, it was a very disappointing ride for me because I got a flat--I didn't have a pump but someone was nice enough to help out but unfortunately (the tube got pinched somehow and that blew up as well).

Ahh well...there'll be next year.

I got a flat also, but luckily it was a slow leak and I didn't even know I had a flat until I got home and took my bike out of the car. Good thing too, cuz I got a flat on Saturday so I don't think I could have stood it if I had two rides in a row ruined by flats.

I heard someone fell and had to be choppered out, but also heard that person wasn't riding with the tour.. not sure how reliable that info was though.

I thought this ride, and the overall organization was really good. I've done several organized events, each with their own pros and cons, but this one was definetly more pro then con. The congestion at the start was a little bit of a pain, but I learned that I can run over a traffic cone with my bike and not fall off (always good info). I did manage to get up a little close to the front for the start so I can only imagine how tricky it must have been for people who got there later.

Overall there was a lot of mixed ability there, and everybody I saw seemed to be having a good ride. I saw a couple falls, but all of them were at very slow speeds and most were just inexperience with clip ins.(at least thats what it looked like to me).

Good event, hopefully by next year I'll be able to use it as a recovery ride from the Tam double, but we'll see. I'd definetly do it again though was lots of fun. No matter what though, next year, I'll have my BF NorCal blazin:eek: