Outriders
The 21st annual Outriders ride was Saturday.
The ride itself was pretty good. [Ride log] It seems my ideal temperature for riding is between 65 and 70. There were a few times when it got colder than that and I started to feel it (fingers and toes start to go numb), but generally it was good. Completely overcast except for a minute or two here and there. I kept the same pace for the entire 125 miles which is unusual as I typically tend to die towards then end. I didn’t eat enough at the 3d check stop, so I ran out of gas for a short while around mile 100, but still managed to finish at 16.4 mph which is quite good for me.
Splits:
1st stop: (no split, apx 30 mi) Halifax
2nd stop: 61.03mi 3:44:34 16.52avg 34.5max Sandwich
3rd stop: 83.16mi 5:04:27 16.60avg 36.4max Yarmouth
4th stop: 105.65mi 6:27:08 16.57avg 36.4max Wellfleet
5th stop: (no split, apx 115 mi) Truro
end stop: 127.32mi 7:51:14 16.40avg 36.4max Provincetown @ 4:23pm
Ridership was way down from last year. There were 186 registered compared with about 260 last year. It’s even lower when you consider there was a huge crowd from Toronto (their contingent gets bigger every year). My theory is that the Harpoon Brewery-to-brewery ride took all the speedsters out of this one. I didn’t see hardly any TT and Tri bikes. Last year had bunches (flocks?) of Kestrels and the like. Didn’t see any this year, but the first rider in got there at about 1:20. It’s time to start advertising the ride again, I suppose. They haven’t advertised for several years because the ridership was so heavy that they limit it to 300 riders. But Harpoon and the fact that winter still seems to be around in large quantities lowers the number of riders.
It was a show-n-go start. Since the start is just down the street from where I live and it can have lots of traffic from time to time, there’s no mass start, you can start anywhere from 5:30 to 6:30 with a recommended start of around 6:00. I got started around 6:05 or 6:10 and finished at 4:23, just shy of 8 hours in the saddle.
Since nobody really cares about pictures, here’s the only one. It’s of the really important stuff: food. The entire matrix of options is the ((bread!) × (toppings!)) where bread = { white, wheat, sourdough, rye, pumpernickle} and toppings = { peanut butter, jelly, fluff, nutella }. My choice was PB on sourdough.
MMmmm Fluffernutter!
The route is mostly flat with rolling hills mostly just south of Boston and along the cape service road (which has, at long last, been repaved, thank you jeebus). I started to have some knee trouble right around the 100 mile mark. The same trouble as the beginning of last year, except this year it’s in the other knee. There doesn’t seem to be any sign of it today, though, so I think if I keep below 100 miles at a turn and if it’s above 65 degrees, I’ll be fine. I’m a bit sore and stiff today but not anywhere near what I expected.
The guest house was nice enough. I was wondering for a while whether I might be the only one staying there, owners included. I got there and there was a note to me left on the office door saying “your key is in your room.” The problem with that, of course, is that the room was locked. So I found some towels in the bathroom and took a shower. By the time I was done, the owner was back and let me into the room. I know there must have been others staying there as I heard the water running from time to time. The only other person I saw was the next morning when someone came out to the patio for a cig and a Pepsi (yum!).
The brunch the next morning was okay. Brunchy stuff. That’s where the smaller size of the crowd really showed. It also showed during the ride when there were stretches of 15 or even 20 miles when I saw no one at all.
I’ve never really been into the whole Provincetown scene, so when brunch ended around 12:30, I walked back to the pier (about ½ hour), napped, and waited for the return boat at 3:00. Choppy ride on the way back, everyone stayed in their seats to prevent whapping your head on a beam.
