Sea Gull Century 2007

My goal was to start earlyish, and finish by 3PM. My game plan: find people who are going fast and draft as much as possible. Well, it turns out that the guy I roomed with had a similar plan, so when we started, we got in this huge paceline, probably 30 riders, and just booked it outta Salisbury. The paceline was interesting: the guy in the front would pull for about 5 minutes, then drop out and the next guy would take over, and the riders would keep cycling that way. In the line, we got up to 23mph, which was the top of my sustainable speed, so when it came to my turn to pull, I could only maintain it for 3 minutes before I had to drop back.

So the Sea Gull/Assateague Century is only a "century" (or 100 miles) if you actually stop at each rest stop (notably, the first). Well, the paceline I was in skipped the first, at 20 miles, which was a 2-mile detour from the main path, and we booked it to the 35-mile rest stop, which only had water and Gatorade. By about this time, I realized that I had neglected to bring any food, so I dropped off at the 35-mile rest stop (and the paceline kept going to the 60-mile rest stop), got some Gatorade, used the bathroom, and started off again on my own after a 10-minute stop.

For the first 50 miles of the ride, we were riding through fairly dense fog, with a visibility of maybe 25 yards. When you're riding at 20mph, 25 yards is not a long distance. The 100% humidity was good for hydration (breathing in moisture meant I didn't really need my water bottles that much) but bad for visibility. About 4 miles after the 35-mile stop, after going through all sorts of bumpy road (thoughts of the Roubaix ride in France, where bikes need to be made out of really-strong stuff, lest the cobblestones literally shake the bikes to pieces, were going through my head) and not being really sure whether I was on the path or not, I thankfully came up to a marked turn (they had white spraypainted seagulls on the road with arrows indicating the direction of travel). This turn was at a "T" in the road. Y'know at turns in the road, there are places where cars go, and where they don't go collects all sorts of gravel? Well my line took me through one of those patches of gravel...but I didn't see it and I wiped out! Scraped up my shin, bruised my hip, and scratched my until-then-pristine bike. As I was shaking myself off, more riders were coming up to the turn, so I yelled at them "GRAVEL! GRAVEL!" and, even with the warning, not 5 minutes after I wiped out, another rider wiped out in the same way.

He and I were OK, and we both jumped into the same 4-person paceline, taking it a little easier at 19.5mph, and when the next turn came up, everyone played it safe and took the turn at maybe 14mph. I stayed in that line until the 60-mile stop. I don't quite remember how I managed to do that, because a rock had lodged itself in my left brifter and was making shifts and braking less responsive--the front brake caliper wouldn't release all the way, causing rubbing, and the it was hard to shift the front derailleur. Thankfully, at our slower pace, I was able to get away with opening the Quick-Release on the front brake caliper, and I didn't need my large chainring at all (whereas when I was in that first paceline, the only way I kept up at all was by sitting in the large chainring the whole time), just stayed in the middle ring, and I was fine.

Got to the 60-mile rest stop at Assateague Island (after crossing that bridge and dodging all the horse manure). By then the Sun had come out and started to beat away all of the fog. At this stop there were lots of cookies, baked goods, fruits...so I gorged myself on the food, got some water to wash out my scrapes, and grabbed some packaged Fig Newtons for trailfood, and started off again after resting for 15 minutes to let the food have time to work. This time I joined up with rider #3056 and we double-teamed it to the 80-mile stop.

TO ANYONE DOING THE SEA GULL CENTURY: THERE IS PIE AND ICE CREAM AT THE 80-MILE STOP! The guy I was rooming with didn't know, and he apparently blew by it, but #3056 and I stopped and had a slice of pie and some ice cream and filled up on liquids. We started off again after 10ish minutes, and found two more riders for our paceline, still going at almost 20mph.

During this final 20-mile leg, we were being passed by teams and huge pacelines, but no one felt any pressure to link-up and go any faster, which was good because the sun was out in-full by now and we could enjoy the sights (and smells!) of rural Eastern Shore, Maryland (I commented "Ah, feels like I'm back in Blacksburg!"). All the while, we were still doing our paceline thing, with (maybe) 5-minute pull-rotations (it wasn't anything official, but that's how it worked out). On my second pull, I got to the front of the pack and basically set my mental cruise-control to 20mph and set my cyclocomputer to show ride-time, after five minutes I would rotate out. Well, as I came up to a road crossing (most of the major thoroughfare roadcrossings had a police officer directing traffic, favoring the riders), I looked back...and it turned out that I had dropped my entire paceline. So I went slow, waiting for one of them to show up and I asked him, "Where'd everybody go?" and he said, "Well when you hit the gas, no one could keep up!" So he and I took turns pulling the other all the way back to the finish line.

At the 60-mile stop I took my phone out and saw I missed a call from my mom, which said my parents and my sisters were coming to Salisbury to cheer me on at the finish line. With almost perfect timing, they got to the line only 30 minutes before I showed up at 1PM! It was nice to have someone in the crowd there to cheer for me!

Statistics:
Saddle Time: 4h49m00s
Actual Time: ~5h30m (including all of the stops, and the 5-7 minutes after my wipeout)
Max Speed: 28.3mph
Avg Speed: 20.0mph
Distance: 96.33mi

After the ride we went to the Sage Diner for lunch, then my family went home and I went back to my hotel room to shower and crash for two hours. Then I joined Sridhar, Mike, and Jacob (the guy I roomed with) for a beer on-campus and to swap stories about the ride (this was about 5:30PM, and there were people still finishing the ride!). Evidently Jacob finished his ride in 4h30m (4h25m saddle-time, 5 minutes at the 60-mile stop), Sridhar had a saddle-time of 5h22m (my family and I saw him and cheered him on when we were heading out for food), and Mike finished...later.

Not too bad for my first century ride!