Category: Bike Rides and Routes

My first century took about 10 hours. I can’t put my hands on my log book for 1999 right now to know the exact rate.

Looking back at the log for the 11 mph century in 2000, I see that I was slightly off. My rolling average was actually 11.6 mph and total rolling time was 8 hrs, 35 mins. With stops, though, it was still close to 10 hours. The next day I rode 81.2 miles at an average of 11.0 mph. (That must have been why I remembered 11 mph.)

Those centuries were done on a comfort bike with 26″ x 1.95″ tires. When I took it in a couple weeks before my first century, the wrench just shook his head and said, “100 miles on that bike is like 130 on a road bike.” I also bring along the kitchen sink when I ride. My bike is on my LBS Wall of Shame because it weighed in at 49.5 lbs, with lights, tools, food, etc.

While I’m plodding along, I comfort myself by thinking that anybody can ride fast on a 17-pound bike with 21-year-old legs, pulled along by a paceline.

My most recent century over the same route with my new road bike was done against a headwind and a rolling average of 13 miles an hour.

I have a regular 66-mile ride I do at least once a month. My rolling average there is usually 13 to 14.5 mph.

On group rides, I pass a whole lot of folks who are slower than me and I get blown off the road by a whole lot of folks who are faster than me. I hope both groups are enjoying their day as much as I am.

Nah, aero I’m not. My chest and stomach changed places about 20 years ago. One thing I did notice was that fat guys have an advantage on the downhill runs.

I wouldn’t consider a 13 mph century fast. The major difference between the 11 mph and the 13 mph was that I was the absolute last person to make it in the first year. The last sag wagon of the day tried to convince me to give it up when I still had about 30 miles to go. I told ’em that I had lights, water, food and a cell phone and that I was used to riding alone. I was monitoring the ham frequency the wagon was using, so I heard them radio back that there was one rider left on the century course “and he’s got everything but doppler radar and he says he’s gonna make it.”

The next year, I was still passing lots of riders when I finished up. That made me feel much better.

Putting that in perspective, hundreds of riders were already showered, napped and on their fourth pitcher of beer long before I pulled in.

I admire the hard-core riders who knock off a century in less than four hours and I wish I was a couple of mph faster. On the other hand, I don’t want to ride in a paceline sniffing someone’s shorts for those four hours.

I was on a ride and stopped at a Palm Beach County park to cool down and check out the beach. A maintenance worker walked up and started to check me out. “Nice bike,” he said. Figuring he was just making conversation (after all, it was just a $300 Trek Navigator), I thanked him and didn’t really offer much more of a conversational opening.

Then he asked me about the Nightrider lights. “I’m trying to figure out what kinds of lights I want to buy now that the days are getting shorter,” he said.

We talked a little longer and it turns out that this fellow had been commuting 50 miles every day for the last six months — over 6,000 miles. He had ridden more miles in six months than I had in two years.

Every morning he gets up at 4 a.m. to be at work at 5:30. It’s true that he doesn’t face the kind of temperature extremes in Florida that you Yankees do, but we still have killer headwinds, heat and rain.

He was proud that he had just been named employee of the month because he hadn’t been late a single morning during the last six months that he had been bike commuting. He said that he used to be a maintenance worker for the city, but he got tired of cleaning the same 450 offices day after day. He like the idea of working in a park where he is “getting paid for what tourists pay for”.

His only complaint was that his long commute and two jobs cuts down on his jogging time.

I gave him a handful of blinkies from my bag for his pre-dawn commutes, wished him godspeed and rode off down the road with my tail between my lycra-covered legs.

That guy on his X-mart bike is a better man than me in a whole lot of ways.

Five of us rode from Key Largo to Key West in February.

If you’re talking about a serious touring-type ride, the ride TO Key West was enjoyable (the operative word is FEBRUARY).

If you want to do serious riding, Key West isn’t where you want to be. If you want to putz around on a rented cruiser or a beater bike to keep from having to find a parking spot in a tiny town that is in total gridlock, then Key West is your spot. Bikes, mopeds and other small transportation vehicles are readily available. (The bikes even come with D-cell flashlights strapped to the handlebars for night riding. Probably to give the drunks something to aim at.) It’s a tourist town/Bourbon Street wannabe.

There is ample shoulder, bike lane or bike path the whole 106 miles, except for a few hundred yards at Bahia Honda. Even though the shoulder is fairly narrow and traffic is running 45 to 65 mph, I never had a close brush. There is enough utility biking in the keys that the local motorists are very bike-aware. A car would pull out onto the bike lane to get on the road, see us, then back up to clear the way. Most of the time they’d give us a friendly wave or a greeting.

We encountered our first certifiable a-hole in 106 miles about 100 yards into Key West: a Hummer full of college kids who deliberately pulled out to block the bike lane just as I approached them.

My Keys advice in June would follow your N’awlins advice: find a cool spot and hunker down. It was a hot ride in FEBRUARY. It would be a killer in the summertime. I had a couple of friends who rode it in July. Took ’em four days with all the stops they made to jump in the water to cool off.

In 1980, I spent a month in Key West as a photographer covering the Cuban Boatlift. Like I’ve posted before, the sun in Key West is exactly twice as bright as it is in West Palm Beach, FL. By light meter reading, the sun in West Palm Beach is twice as bright as the sun in southern Ohio. Use your sunblock accordingly.

If you want more details about the Keys ride, lemme know. (By the way, the beaches in Key West ain’t all that great.)