Monster Cookie Metric Century April 29

[DarcyInOregon]

Hi,

Suzie and I are registered for the Monster Cookie Metric Century on Sunday, April 29. Is anyone from TE going to be there besides us? If so, can you stop and say hi, or ride along?

Here is the link:

http://www.salembicycleclub.org/majrides.html

It is a 62-mile route, starting in Salem, going across the Willamette Valley to Champoeg State Park, stopping for lunch in the park, then back again. The route goes over many of the valley farm roads I cycle on every day. The agriculture is diverse, ranging from hops farms to wholesale nursery establishments. Last month the wholesale nurseries were digging up and shipping out the blooming shrubs, which was fun to see as I cycled by. This month the nurseries are digging up and balling the roots of the large landscape trees, the kind of trees used to line new residential streets. There is some semi-truck traffic on a few of the roads, but the semis are transporting the nursery products to market and so they are a different type of truck driver.

It is an easy ride, a perfect ride if you want to acquire distance without having to pedal over a mountain range. Suzie, Ellen and I (all members of this forum) biked a 45-mile part of this loop on Saturday and we really had a good time.

You can buy a box lunch in advance for five dollars.

This will be our first Monster Cookie. I believe there will be over 1,000 cyclists participating in the event.

Darcy

[Wahine]

Thanks for posting this Darcy. It sounds great. I'll see if I can convince DH to do it.

I'll let you know if we're coming.

[Xrayted]

Hiya Darci. I'd like to do that one too I think. I'll be moving to the Portland area at the end of the month and I will have to see what my new job schedule is like. But I will put this one in my calendar and hope for the best.

thanks
X.

[Kitsune06]

looks like fun! ...heck, anything with 'monster cookie' in the title grabs my attention!

[Trekhawk]

Have fun girls. Do they hand out monster cookies???? Mmmmm cookies.

[DarcyInOregon]

I am bumping this thread up since the ride will be here soon, just in case it hasn't been seen.

The tentative weather forecast for the day of the ride is sunny with scattered clouds and with temperatures hovering around 70 degrees.

Darcy

[Susan Otcenas]

Darcy,

Did you ride yesterday? I hope you made it. It was SUCH a fantastic day! No rain, warm sunshine in the afternoon. Perfect. I rode with some friends, but half of TE's staff was there too. Seemed like everytime I turned around I saw someone else I knew. It felt like every cyclist in Oregon had turned out for the day!

And the monster snickerdoodle at the end tasted great.

Susan

[DarcyInOregon]

Hi Susan,

Suzie and I rode together and we had a fabulous time. We didn't know anyone because we don't belong to any clubs. However it was fun meeting and chatting with other cyclists at the rest stops and at lunch.

I was on the descent on Champoeg Road when a pack of male riders went by, probably going around 40 mph. Their bikes hit the ridge, that big bump where the asphalt of the road is lower than the bridge, and their bikes went up into the air. That is where other cyclists have blown out their front tires and crashed in the past if they were going too fast. Right in front of me, there was a serious accident in the pack. Hitting the big bump caused the airpump of one cyclist to fall off his bike, and the pump hit another cyclist in the pack, which caused that cyclist to crash into the first cyclist. Both cyclists crashed into each other at the end of the bridge at a high speed, and as I came to a stop I heard over and over again, "Do you need an ambulance?" The pack had come to a screeching halt and were gathered around the downed cyclists. They were in shock, but seemed to think they were ok. Their bicycles appeared to be totaled, which is a shame, given how expensive they probably were; the bikes looked like expensive racing bikes to me. The airpump was sitting there in the road in the middle of the bridge and I picked it up and handed it to a member of the pack.

Suzie and I are happy with our ride with respect to our statistics. However, it was disconcerting to see how fast many of the cyclists can pedal, especially as we thought we were doing well, but zip zip zoom, there would be another pack of Category A riders flying by us, and many of those really fast riders had totally gray heads, meaning they were older than us.

We get confused about our average speed. I've stopped paying any attention to it as being significant for myself, but it was especially confusing on this ride. For the majority of the miles, we were holding a speed that varied between 15.5 and 18.0 on the first half, and 14.0 to 17.5 on the return. Yet when we reached the mid-way destination, our average speed was only 12.6. When we checked it again upon our return, even though we had ridden slower on the return half of the ride, our final average speed had increased to 13.

The day after the ride we are both doing well. I have just a bit of soreness in my thighs, and a little rubbing soreness in my crotch. Suzie says she has the same thing. I think it means we both trained well for the ride with our own respective schedules. I hope to finish a few centuries by the end of the summer, rides that are similar to this metric century and don't have endless miles of steep climbs.

Here is our photo. I am the sturdy beauty on the left and Suzie is the gazelle beauty on the right.