Description
- Name: The Longest Day
- Pace: Low 17's mph avg (into the low 20's with pace lines)
- Distance: 208 - 212 miles
- Terrain: 2 - decent hills on the first half, 4 for the rest (3 - 4, on a scale of 1 (nasty hills) - 4 (flat as a pancake))
- # of Stops: 8
- Destination: Cape May Lighthouse, NJ
- Starting point: Port Jervis, NY
- Finish point: Lighthouse, Cape May, NJ
- Starting time: 4:30 AM
- Finish time: 7:00 PM (expected)
- Club ride: Yes (CJBC - Paid registration also required)
- Cue sheets provided: yes
- Guests allowed: no
- Route: Longest Day Double Century
- Rain doesn't cancel this ride
Weather prediction:
- Partly Sunny, 55F low, winds SW @4 mph, 8 mph gusts (in Port Jervis, NY, 5 AM)
- Partly Sunny, 78F high, winds SW @11 mph, 21 mph gusts (in Chatsworth, NJ, 12:30 PM)
- Partly Sunny, 76F high, winds S @11 mph, 18 mph gusts (in Cape May Point, NJ, 7:30 PM)
Like I've said I like long rides and this is the ride of year for me. This will be my 6th Longest Day double century and I'm looking forward to many more. Don't get me wrong I'm proud of rides I lead. I've added a lot of new rides this year (more to come) and a new starting point. But this is the ride I train two months for, I created my own Longest Day web page with the details. I hope for hot weather though my team mates would prefer that it's about 12F cooler than I like (90F). I just really don't want to wear a sweater on the Longest Day. :-)
So it looks like we're not going to be too hot or too cold for this year's Longest Day. Though I may need a sweater at the beginning and towards the end of the ride. It may be a bit cool for me down in Chatsworth, only 77F. The wind is a bit stronger than I'd like but it's what is expected around this time of year. The last 20 miles are going to be into a head wind. Our training has gone well so I expect we'll see the 17's for an average speed. If we're lucky and can find other teams to work with that are of the same pace we should be able to pick up the pace a bit but I'm not banking on that.
I'm not sure how well we'll do on the first half. We're lousy climbers (we're flat-landers) but this year our climbing is better than it's been in a while. So maybe we won't go so slow on the first half but I know we're not going to try and break records (our records of course :-) as that would mean we'd have very little left for the last half. That's the tougher part because of weather and mental and physical exhaustion.
We've picked up one more person so now we're a team of four. I'm hoping that we'll be able to work together and that we don't slow him down too much. He said he did a 150 mile ride at 16.5. With a team I think he'll be able to hold the 17 mph avg. He is a lot faster than we are on the hills (isn't everyone ;-).
Post-ride:
I'll post a separate blog entry for this ride as it will be a very long entry.
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