cappuccino911

So since someone started a reflections on the NYC Century a couple weeks ago, I figured why not start one on Escape New York.

This was my first full century, I did the 75 mile route for the NYC century so that I could get back in time to watch football!

My initial thought was if I could take the best of these 2 rides, it would be a really good ride. The biggest diss to the NYC Century was the poor quality of the rest stops. Since that was my first organized ride, I didn't know what to expect. After doing Escape New York I must say that the rest stops were WAY better though access to water could have been a little bit better. Getting food was quite easy, perhaps because there were fewer riders and the first rest stop was only for century riders so not nearly as many people there.

Escape wasn't as organized at the start. I thought there was going to be some sort of official start at 7am and nothing was happened so i just sat tight and waited, finally at 7:20ish I asked someone and they were like "Oh you just go whenever your ready!" Kinda sucked for me because I really wanted to get going right a 7 to coordinate meeting my gf at the finish line.

The sign in process was simple and the best part was this was a $35 event that had coffee and pastries at the start as well as tons of freebies like hammer gel, snickers marathon bars, chamois creme, etc. If you registered day of it was $55 The NYC Century had ZILCH at the starting line and while I forget the cost I know same day registration was $85 and I believe early registration was still close to $50.
The finish was also way better, a few random vendors giving away food samples and stuff as well as the Manganaros heros which was actually just about the most perfect thing I could have eaten after that ride, it really hit the spot. A band perfroming in the gazebo was also nice and of course the weather was excellent yesterday vs the rain at the NYCC.

As for the route, I thought it was good. It was fun seeing all the rich folks homes early in the ride, then riding through some of the hills and getting out more into the country side as well as riding through stony point which was a particularly nice section along the water. In my opinion the ride surely had to be hillier than they advertised and it would be great if anyone with garmin data on the elevation could post it. My runkeeper stopped tracking when my battery died at mile 78 and at that point I had over 6000 feet of gain. Someone else also posted runkeeper data showing the ride was over 8000 feet. Not complaining, just simply stating that it may have caught some people by surprise. According to runkeeper the nyc century 75mile route had about 3300 feet of gain. I found that to be quite easy but I was a little under trained for the century because I didn't get any riding in the week after the NYC Century and not as much as I wanted to last week. I got through this ride fine though the last hills at the end were a bit brutal I stopped 3 times and let my heart rate come back down before I got to the top. the people in my immediate area that were able to ride all the way up it literally were laying on teh ground at the side of the road at the top so I ended up passing 80% of those who passed me on the way up! If this ride truly was closer to 8500 feet of gain, I think it's a bit of dirty trick to advertise it as 4500. the last thing I think would be a nice change is a more formal Finish Line. It's a big deal for a lot of people to complete something like this and it would be nice to ahve an acutal finish line with people standing around it cheering as you ride through. I just kind of spotted my gf and pulled off onto the sidewalk and walked into the park.

In the end, I popped my century cherry with a 7hour 47 minute time with 6 hours 52 minutes of ride time. When I finished I definately enjoyed it but didn't feel excited to do another one anytime soon. When I woke up today feeling quite good, my first thought was that I wanted to start seriously training and do another one and get my time down!

Now if only we could get some beer vendors at these events for the post ride festivites it would be great!