JoelS

Jason picked me up early this morning at 5:15. This is after I woke up 30 minutes before my alarm. Thankfully I remembered to turn it off so it wouldn't wake up Bess!

We made it out to the ride start and found quick and easy parking. After a bit of a wait, we got signed in and then unpacked the car. We also ran into a bunch of BF'ers and rode with them in the morning.

Chris suggested lopping off about 10 miles of the flat "junk miles" and the bad roads. That was ok with me, as I'm just off a 2 week layoff from the flu (yup, that H1N1 strain).

So we set off. Broke off from the official ride and made our way out. It was fast riding behind the tandem train! I was feeling pretty good this morning and the speed was just fine. I made sure to eat something after a bit, and was drinking. We took a quick pit stop down a hill and continued on to pick up the ride. We hit the water stop and refilled. I ran into some folks from one of my local cycling clubs. They were looking pretty good.

Off we went into Fairfield and then the Gordon Valley Loop. The group split up here. Still feeling pretty good, but as we were leaving Fairfield my legs were starting to give up. That's when I realized how much fitness I'd lost during the time off. I struggled on and Jason, John, and I made it to the lunch stop.

I ate a pretty good lunch as I was hungry! Didn't eat much breakfast this morning, though maybe I should have. It was rough going after lunch. There was a pretty good hill right off, and I was feeling it. Stomach cramps set in too. And my HR was off the charts. I haven't seen 185 in quite some time.

I took it easy the rest of the way to cardiac, riding a pretty slow pace, and by myself, having been left behind by the faster riders. That was ok, they waited for me at the next rest stop.

I was feeling pretty good on Cardiac and climbed strong, passing several other riders. The descent was a bit sketchy due to some riders that weren't very considerate. I guess these things are to be expected on a ride like this though.

I was really suffering now, but pushed on to the rest stop, riding at a sedate 14mph. That was about all I could manage.

When I made the rest stop at Lake Salano, I seriously considered sagging in (what does SAG stand for anyway?). But I took a break, ate a cookie, drank some soda, refilled and Jason and I set off again. It was tough going for me at first. Legs really tightened up at the stop.

But they loosened up as we went. Geeze that was a boring/monotonous ride back. Just nothing to look at and straight roads that seemed to go on for miles. Even so, I recovered quite a bit and we were chugging along at about 17.5.

About 10 miles out we were passed by a large group as we made a turn. Jason and I latched on the back and they towed us all the way back at about 21. That was a fast return. I'm really glad I finished so strong.

All in all, a good ride. 96 miles, 3338 feet of climbing, 16.3avg.

Here are a few pictures that I took.

cantdrv55

Great report and ride, Joel.

I ended up doing the entire metric. I thought I'd bail out early but I just kept waiting for something new to look at but nada. No hills ever came except the one rolling hill near Lake Solano. That was probably the easiest 68 miles I've ever ridden. Physically easy, mentally tough. Just miles and miles of farm lands. I had to play mind tricks with myself to keep going. Great weather though. I'll probably do the family ride next year with my little boy in tow.

JoelS

I gotta tell you though, if you do the full century, when you come up on Cardiac and see the road just turn up. That's a bit intimidating.

kdphan

this was my first century and oh boy cardiac hill was awesome.

I cramped up at least 4 times today but kept pushing through it each time.

My buddy's dad kept telling us "that's the last climb" numerous times to get our spirits up.

Ended up with 6hrs 11mins of actual saddle time.

avg was exactly 17.

I will definitely do it again next year.

anyone spot "Empyrion Wealth Management" jerseys?

JoelS

I did. I think my friend Savorn was wearing one. Saw you guys at lunch.

kdphan

That's our crew : )

bigbossman 

SAG = Support And Gear.

JoelS

Thanks. I was wondering about that on the very flat ride back today.

redspoke

Sounds like a great ride today. It's wild to hear Joel talk century rides now!
I managed to squeeze in 35 today. Man! Gorgeous day. The humidity made for plenty o' sweat though didn't it?

BlastRadius

Thanks for the report Joel. Good job on completing the ride strong, especially after THE flu.

td.tony

I'd also like to add that the weather was absolutely gorgeous today!!

cantdrv55

Joel, you had H1N1 and rode a century w/cardiac hill? Ironman!

dauphin

He was flying up that hill today!

JoelS

Hey, I'm waiting for the other reports!

wolfpack 

i'm going to try to get my pictures/report done today....

cccorlew

What a fun ride. The fun started the night before when went to Chris and Deborah's for dinner. We had ribs to die for and a Zin that almost made me cry it was so good. The company was even better than the dinner. We looked at photos of Chris and Deborah's tandem trip down the coast. Amazing.

Then I jumped in my car, drove an hour home and hour back, this time with my Sedis I had left behind.

After spending 4.5 hours sleeping, we launched for the ride. Wine, and no sleep, great planning, huh?

The ride had great light and perfect weather. Chris took us on a short non-official road so we could avoid a few miles of yahoos and bozos near the start. Jeez. I'm glad riding is popular, but come on Lance-wanta-bes. Grow up and stop playing racer boy in the crowd. You aren't that good, and you aren't that fast.

I did get to see two people just fall over for no reason. Cleats must be sooooo hard.

The ride itself was pretty easy. I averaged about 15.something. Sitting in behind the tandem is like being on a train. I should give some of my bike log miles to Chris and Deborah because they did all the work the last 10 miles or so.

What a good day.

shiz702

Ok here is my report.

I arrived at about 6:30am, stood in line for a few and then got checked in. Unloaded the bike and was about to set off when I ran into Joel. He said he was riding with a bunch of BF peeps and asked if I wanted to join. Sure! So we waited for everyone to show up and we were off. They had planned on cutting out 10 miles in the beginning and I was ok with that, but after a few miles I got caught up in the sea of pacelines and ended getting separated from the group. No biggie though, the first group I was in was averaging 28mph, sweet! Then we turned onto a road with a nasty headwind and the group got spread out. Everyone in back (myself included) got dropped. So I just sat up and waited for the next group to pass me and hopped on. This was pretty much my routine for the first 43 miles.

After the second rest stop we finally hit some gentle rollers and a few smaller hills. It was a nice change from the first 45 miles of just flat boring country roads. I rode with a couple who was getting married at the 4th rest stop at the park! They were wearing bride and groom jerseys, hilarious. I chatted with them for a bit and we rolled into the lunch stop together. At the lunch stop I met up with the BF gang again and we all set off together for the big hills. The first climb went fine, I just chugged along at a slow pace while Joel was leapfrogging me waiting for everyone to catch up lol. Then half way up the second climb (I guess this was cardiac?) I started to cramp badly. At one point I stood up to stretch my legs out and my right leg completely locked up on me. I nearly toppled over trying to get unclipped to shake it off. And then as I was clipping back in I somehow stomped down too hard with my right leg and pulled my calf muscle, ouch! Ya I was not having fun at this point. I managed to get back on the bike and limped it in to the final rest stop.

At the last rest stop I took a very long break. Much longer than I had wanted to but it was necessary to rid these cramps. I drank a ton of fluids which seemed to help. Then I took off for the most boring 25 miles of my life. I found a small group to ride with and we were averaging somewhere around 17-18mph which was fine with me. With about 6 or 7 miles to go one of them had a mechanical and the whole group pulled over (I'm assuming they were all friends) which left me to do the rest solo. At this point it didn't matter, I just kept my head down and chugged along and before I knew it I was back at my car! All in all I had a great time and it was nice to finally meet some BF folks, I hope to meet up with you guys again soon!

Craig

totals:

105.6 miles
16.5 avg
6:20 ride time
3200 ft climbing

cycle17

Great reports folks! Looks like everyone had a good ride and my secret agent confirmed that the weather was very nice. This is on my list of rides to do next year since I'll be there for good. Still trying to convince Overthere that 100 miles is fun... I've got until next October to convince her Love the jerseys too.

tprevost

You can do it Cycle 17.... just tell her she gets to follow you for 100 miles, that always works for VMC

DiabloScott

Great reports.

Any body know who the original Foxy was?

bikingshearer 

Not positive, but my educated guess is it was Ed Delano, aka "Foxy Grandpa." In the mid-70's, when I was a teenager with soon-to-be-demolished fantasies of being a racer, Ed Delano was a regional legend, a 70-something guy who would kick butt and take names every year in the Davis Double Century. The few times I saw him in the flesh, he wore an old wool jersey (in my memory, it said "Foxy Grandpa" front and back, but I may be wrong about that) and a hairnet helmet, the "track" kind that had extra padding in the strips and a padded piece that looped behind the ear.

From what I recall, Ed was universally loved and respected. I never had a chance to talk with him (I couldn't keep up!), which is a shame.

Anyway, that's my best guess. I think it's a pretty good one.

bigbossman 

My contribution to the thread - these guys were pretty impressive:

bikingshearer 

Ride report for the Off-the-Back crowd. Actually, it's the second one, because the Internazies ate the incredibly detailed, pithy, and downright hysterical report I prepared last night. I'm not kidding.

The "Three B's" assembled in Davis at the appointed hour, more or less. No, not Bach, Brahms and Beethoven, but bigbossman, BlankCrows and bikingshearer, aka BBM, BC and (quite appropriately) BS. After the usual dawdling and stuff, off we went at about 7:50.

We signed up for the 100 mile ride with every intention of sawing off the big hills for roughly 80 miles total. That is exactly what we did.

As reported, the ride to Rest Stop #1 in beatiful downtown Elmira was flaaaaaaaaaat. BBM got caught up in "suck the wheels of tandems and pace lines" fever and disappeared up the road whilst BC and BS maintained a more civilized pace. That also meant we did not have to listen to BBM complain about the (lack of) scenery. I actually enjoyed the early morning ride - seeing the hot-air balloons floating and the hills in the distance was fun. Of course, when you are stuck in a pace line with your nose glued to the butt of the person in front of you, BBM, you don't get to notice such things . But I digress . . . . .

At the Elmira rest stop, I took a short spin on BC's beautiful Chesini to see if I could identify a noise coming from the rear of his bike. As I am a fair bit taller than he, this led BBM to observe that I looked alarmingly akin to a trained circus bear. I couldn't disagree. I'll stick to my "freakishly large" frames, as BBM so charmingly has dubbed them.

The ride to Rest Stop #2 at Mile 43 was a little less enjoyable due to (a) a bit of a headwind, not at all bad but enough to notice, and (2) the fact that the ballons had disappeared and the hills were not as easy to see, which made for duller scenery. On, and now that we were back with BBM, we got to hear about it.

After a few rollers. Rest Stop #2. Barely. By that, I mean that we got there in the nick of time, as the guys manning it had literally started up the engine of their truck to drive away, having concluded that no one else was coming. I am not exagerating when I say that if we had arrived 30 seconds later, there would not have been a Rest Stop #2. I can also report that we were the last ones to make use of said stop, as the guys did drive off after giving us water. A couple of people were serviced by a passing SAG driver, but I suspect that a few of the later century riders had to make it to Rest Stop #3 before refueling again.

This is where we did our own thing by heading up Pleasant's Valley Road instead of continuing on to where the real climbs were. PV Road was pretty, as always, and we were soon enjoying lunch at Rest Stop #4, having blown off Rest Stop #3. We ran into cccorlew, MyLittlePony, JoelS, RedRider, cgallagh, that Reno guy with the triplet and his two sons, and likely others I am forgetting.

The ride back into town was uneventful except for BBM discovering that the underside of bots dot reflectors are sharp. He managed to ride over said thing, snake-biting his rear tube and banging up his rear wheel. He managed to waste only one CO2 cartridge in the procees of changing his tube, which is a new low for him - he usually wastes three of four.

At the finish, we grabbed our grub and sat down to debrief with RedRider, cgallagh, Dauphin and, all the way from North Carolina, wolfpack. We all had a great time sitting around, BSing (my specialty) and reliving this and other days' fun and games.

78.39 miles, a wopping 1531 feet of climbing, and an average speed I choose not to reveal in order to protect the guilty . Great weather, good friends, fun day. If you didn't do it, you missed out.

joker8baller

I hit 3 flats on Foxy's... =(. But thanks to wonderful people (Forgive me if I get your names wrong I have a horrible memory... Carlos, Mario, Colin, and the man with 2 spinergy's!, and the guy I bought a tube from), they got me up and running...

Love reading your guy's story... makes me want to do it again. My first century! And I didn't train for it... (Idiot move), nor did I bring enough gear, but lesson learned.

Felt great actually climbing all of the hills and not walking... but the approach decent to Cardiac = AMAZING. And after Cardiac was pretty fun, longggg downhill =)

Rushfan

I planned on completing the century but low miles had me switch to the metric. I spent the day looking for tandems to draft, found two good for 30 miles of suckage, ended up feeling a lot better than I should have, and actually dragged a group along for the last 10 miles into Davis.

Can't believe how good the weather was.