Trans alt century ride report

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Anonymous's picture
Anonymous

So it turned out to be a piece of cake on my fixie. The 40x16 was fine. A little hard trying to keep up the speed at a few points and I hit 140 rpms on some small hill in prospect park. But otherwise it was a smart, knee saving gear for me.

The planners mercifully avoided the hills in the Bronx from last years ride. I was actually disapointed since I had been conserving energy anticipating the worst and think I would have gotten up them no probs.

What a great surprise the velodrome was! I'm going to have to go back with a much bigger gear and really zip around it.

A couple of critques of the ride. I recall last year's route spending more time on bike paths. Too much streets this time. And the Bronx route was much better last year from what I remember.

What I couldn't believe was how many accidents there seemed to be. I saw 6 ambulances attending to different situations on the ride. A guy fell right next to me in the Bronx. He couldn't pop out of his clips. Saw some young guy keel over in Queens but I don't think he was on the ride and actually seemed kind of wasted. We stopped to help but eventually realized he just wanted to sleep it off.

And at the finish area I saw a number of people who were bandaged up. One guy had just been dropped off from an emergency room visit with a cracked rib. Even last night in a neighborhood bar I was talking to some guy with a broken arm who turned out to have broken it on the ride. (Actually he originally said he broke it in a bike race until he realized I was on the ride too!)

One other complaint was that lots of people who didn't seem at all capable of finishing the longer distances don't wait to start with the groups doing more reasonable distances. Some of the downed riders seemed to be related to being over their head fitness wise.

And the usual thing of people coming from all over the country to do the ride that have no clue that the streets of Queens and Brooklyn are not like back home and were going through red lights across roads like Northern Blvd.

Overall, lots of carnage but still pretty fun.

Anonymous's picture
JP (not verified)
Any Asians on the ride :-( (nm)
Anonymous's picture
Bill (not verified)

A few. But there were a large number of West Virginians. Now THOSE people are nuts.

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