Weekend bike ride

Starting in groups

So... It is February and it is cold and rainy, what to do? Go for a bike ride with 4,000 others... Well that was the plan for this last weekend. An annual bike ride, "The worst day ride" is held in February to get riders out and what could be a very bad day indeed. But this last Sunday only brought cold temp's and clouds. It was to be sunny but no such luck, temps in the low 40's meant cold fingers and toes. This ride was a relatively short one of just 18 miles, an hour if rode fast or two if rode at a nice pace. The bad thing is some people want to do it in 4 hours while others want to do it in one... So the start is always a bit of a challenge, the slow and the fast are grouped together and must sort themselves out. Some riders were elderly and very slow, some were children and some were fast speed riders. Oh, the costumes didn't help.

Start/Finish area

The course had to deal with signals at the start so the riders were let go in groups to help with this, problem was once they got started every on bunched up at the first signal. So the first mile was painfully slow and dangerous. Once past the lights and stop signs and onto the main rode, it was easy to get to the left and take off breaking away from the group. The rest of the course wasn't bad, just needed to be able to stay left and ride past all the slower riders. Since it was a little cold, I wanted to maintain a good pace so I would warm up and stay warm. Finished the ride and needed a good cup of coffee so we packed up the bikes and stopped at a local shpe for a cup and warmed up. The ride was OK, should have been a little longer to really to things going but since there is such a wide range of riders, they keep it to just this short distance.