Road Fan

You missed my early-'80s Mondonico, and Mrs. Road Fan's mid-90s steel Georgena Terry.

Road Fan

Sooo? How was RAT?

irwin7638

Rat was excellent. Steve and I rode the metric together and had a great day together. It's a really relaxing and well organized event. One thing I found surprising was the number of women riders. I've never seen so many groups of female riders on a charity ride. It may just be characteristic of the area or the Cherry Capital Club, but it was noticeably female friendly. The course for the metric was not a very challenging ride, Steve said it had more hills than he had seen, but then rode nearly 1 mph faster than his last metric. There are about 4 challenging but short climbs on the course. the rest is rolling country side and shoreline along Torch Lake. I did not feel like I had ridden 60 miles when I was done.

Marc

Steve Sawyer

Marc must be a much stronger rider than I am. While we did manage to avg 13.2 over the 63 miles, the hills made it much the most challenging ride I've done to date. There were two hills in particular that were the toughest I've done - one that was fairly long and steep, and one that was one of those that had about three "tops", the second two of which couldn't be seen when you started out. This is the region of Michigan that hosts several ski resorts, and the glaciers that scooped out these north-south lakes left large ridges between them and the ride managed to go back and forth over these ridges. It was a really great ride, and I'm already putting it on the calendar as a "must do" again next year.

Several things made this much easier than the Tour de Lago where I did my first metric.

• A lot of hills and widely varying scenery and terrain which made it much more interesting - open farm fields, shorelines with cottages, "tunnels" of trees. And hills. Did I mention hills? I understand that the imperial century route has some REALLY challenging hills, if the metric isn't enough fer ya... I'm getting to be one of those sickies that likes hills, and I'm getting continuously better at climbing, so they're more enjoyable than painful.
• Company. Riding by yourself isn't much fun, and on the Tour di Lago, the crowd was pretty thin so you it was hard to find others to socialize with. It was great having Marc to ride with. Don't know if he kept things slow so I could keep up, but if he did, it was appreciated.
• The seat problem that I had on the Tour di Lago was gone. Turns out that I'd screwed with the seat for a 30-miler the day before the di Lago, and while I thought I put it back in the original position, it was actually still nose-up. Marking your seat position is highly recommended, but only if you pay attention to the mark when you move the seat!!
• The hotfoot I had on the Tour di Lago was also much improved. I got some Specialized orthotic inserts that solved 90% of the problem.
• My Brooks saddle, with about 500 miles on it is really getting broken in nicely. No discomfort at all after the 63 miles on RAT.

So far, I'd say that if someone were to come to Michigan for one tour, this is the one to do.

Here's a shot of Marc and I at the first food stop

freedomrider1

Hey,I know those guys

Road Fan

Excellent, Steve, thank you!

BlazingPedals

Have you put the map into RideWithGPS (or some other mapping site) so we can see the hills? I have to wonder if I 'know' any of the hills.

Steve Sawyer

Sure - try this.