I believe in truth in advertising so I have to inform that the flattest metric century is only 59.5 miles according to my odometer. I had hoped to break my personal best for a ride of 50 miles today, but I failed miserably. My personal best is 15.8 mph, which I did last year on the metric part of the Civil War Century. Today I averaged 13.6 mph.
We were riding from Severn, MD down to Annapolis using the BWI trail and the Baltimore and Annapolis Trail as part of the route, so I know I would have to leave the house by 7:45 AM. I prepared extensively for the ride. I loaded my bike, shoes, pump, and helmet in the car the night before. I put a couple of bottles of gatorade in the fridge. I printed out the directions to the ride and added some new podcasts to my ipod for the ride home. I borrowed my wife’s camera, brought sunglasses and sunscreen and headed out.
About ten miles down the I realized that I forgot the direction. I thought I remembered the route, but I missed turn off MD 100. The rider leader’s ceel phone number was with the directions, so I tried every person’s phone number in my cell phone who might be at the ride. Eventually I connected and was directed to the right place, where everyone was waiting for me. I think they were patiently waiting, but everyone disappeared after I got my cue sheet.
Riding on bike trails is quite a bit different than riding on the roads. They frequently have a lot of bike and pedestrian traffic as opposed to cars. They are frequently crossed by small streets. Along the B&A trail there were stop signs at almost every crossing. The cars in the area would almost always stop to let bicyclists by, but I was not confident enought that they would all stop so I was constantly slowing down and looking for cars.
The trail is also not very wide. You can get two cycles next to each other, but everytime you see a bike going the opposite direction it is back to single file. It is easy to get stuck behind a slower cylist for quite a distance. On the most southern portion of the trail the trafffic was lighter and on the trip back I was able to get out in front and travel a bit quicker for awhile, but it did not help enough to get me a decent average speed.
YTD: 1454.3 miles
