Steve Barbour Memorial Tour 2014

This is a ride I've never done before.  They run 3 distances, a metric century (actually 60.6), an 80 miler, and a century.  I chose to ride the metric.  It was very humid today, by far the most humid ride of the year, the fog took over an hour to burn off, temp 68-86F, wind from NE @ 7, max grade 4.1%, HRM zones 3-5 3:11. 60.61 mi (97.54 km) in 3:44:34, avg - 16.19 mph (26.06 km/h), max speed - 32.1 mph (51.7 km/h). My goal was to complete the ride in under 4 hours and I accomplished that with plenty of time to spare.

 

Pedal with Pete 2014

I went out with every intention of riding the metric century despite the encounter with the deer earlier this week (maybe I'll do a separate blog post on that later), but when I heard thunder at the 24mi food stop and my knee was beginning to stiffen up, I decided discretion was the better part of valor and decided to try to beat the rain back to the finish (which I did), so I ended up doing the 47 miler again (for the 3rd year in a row).  I actually really like the ride and it is pretty flat.  This year, despite the crash earlier this week and being even heavier than last year (by 2+ lbs, making this the heaviest I've ever been for an organized ride :-( ), I shaved another 3:23 off my time, so I guess I'm in half way decent shape.  The temperature was perfect and I was under an overcast (as the rain tried to catch me) for the last half of the ride, so conditions were nearly ideal.