Everybody’s Riding

So, we’re definitely not the only group of crazy people trying to ride across the country right now. There are a number of other groups you can follow who are WAY more put together and organized than we are.

First off, there’s the Tour Divide. This is a self supported mountain bike race from Banff to the Mexico border along the Continental Divide. The trail the racers follow is the longest continuous mountain bike trail in the world. Side note: my oldest son, Terran, and I hope to compete in the Tour Divide next year.

Next, it’s Race Across America time. RAAM is pretty hard core (clearly) and I’m always humbled when I see RAAM riders. Usually when we’ve been driving home from the Garrett County Gran Fondo each year we’ll see a few of the RAAM leaders cruising down MD 144 on their way to the coast. Puts rides like the GC Gran Fondo in to persepctive.

And finally, Spokes. It’s a group of 8 MIT students riding from San Fransico to DC and teaching all kinds of classes along the way. I think that’s something JP and I had dreams of doing when we started Cycle OverRide but the realities of scheduling got in the way. The Spokes crew looks to be doing awesome work and really reaching a lot of kids. We wish them the best of luck.

Down to the Wire

Well, we start riding in 5 days. Life is getting serious now. In a few days, even Amazon Prime won’t be able to help us get ready *gasp*.

That said, the Mobile Command Center got dressed up today.

And the jerseys arrived too.

I’m not sure how fast we’ll be, but we’ll look damn good riding. 😉 See you in Yorktown.

 

 

Pittsburgh Route – A test

This is a test post for the mapping widget we’re going to use. This was one of Bruce’s training rides in Pittsburgh a few weeks ago.

Apparently they had pipes along the road. Go figure.

Review: Wilmington Gran Fondo

In years past, riding in a Gran Fondo would have been a target I trained for. This year, I used the Wilmington Gran Fondo as a training ride to get ready for our cross country adventure. I’ve been riding 6 days on and with 1 day rest for the last month and a half. That’s the same schedule we’ll be following on the big ride so I’ve been curious how my body will put up with it. I’ve been doing less mileage than the x-country ride (clearly) but have been ramping up the length of the rides the last few weeks… I think last week my average ride was ~35miles. I figured I’d throw in the Gran Fondo as just another (albeit longer) training ride.

The Course

I’ll be honest. I thought all of Delaware was rail flat. Last year on our Hack the Coast ride, we road up the Delaware coast. The largest climb we had on that ride was up a bridge overpass. The Gran Fondo organizers posted the cue sheets last week. I created the route on Running Free so I could add it to my Garmin. I really didn’t pay attention to the elevation change, but RF claimed 3.6k’ which in hindsight should have clued me in that the ride might have some climbing. (more…)