Maywood 2007

Yesterday was the annual Maywood Earth Ride. I couldn't be less committed to the cause really. The earth? The Ellwood H. May Environmental Park? I don't care about that at all, I just like doing the bike ride. This year I did the 50 mile route again. They have 12, 25, 50, 65, and 100 mile routes. Some year I plan on doing the 65 but it wasn't this year. They call that 65 mile route a metric century. This year again it was windy as usual. The wind was primarily from the NNW and I'd say somewhere in the 10-15 mph range. Most of the first part of the route goes to the North and West. On top of that it was much colder this year than all 3 previous years that I've done this ride. I think I overheard someone at the start say that it was 45 degrees. I'm not usually out there biking in anything less than 60 degrees but I wasn't about to skip this just because it was cooler out. The last two weekends I've done some longer routes to test myself. Last weekend I did a 40 mile route on Saturday and a 50 mile route on Sunday just to see what it felt like. It felt pretty good. Saturday's route in Sheboygan has much more difficult hills than my 50 route but the wind was comparable. My average speed was 14.6 mph across 50 miles yesterday and a full 1.4 mph slower when compared with my 50 mile route from last Sunday. I felt at times like I was crawling along at 10 or 11 mph up some of those hills. Still I was smoking a lot of other riders. I got to one rest stop and wondered where everyone was. Then within a couple minutes the rest area was flooded with other bikers. I'm sort of left with the feeling that I could have gone further or taken a quicker pace. I could've done better. On the other hand if I compare myself with others I'm near the front of the pack. Someday when I get a lighter bike with thinner tires I'm really going to be out in front and kicking butt. Although I expect that if I move up to that 65 mile route I'll be with another class of bikers altogether.