Fall River Century Report
 

All in all, it was a decent ride. It would have been much better under different conditions. The heat made it a mostly miserable day for me.

We drove up to the fairgrounds on friday night to register and camped there on the lawn. It was a great night, as the temps dropped down to about 50 degrees. Ran into several people we knew while walking around the area. one guy was pimping his website he created, I think it was www.cyclistats.com. I've seen it before. If you're serious into tracking your rides it seems like a good way to do it.

We left promptly at 7:00am with the shotgun start. The double metric folks left at 6:00am and the metric and 25 mile crews left at 8:00. I'm guessing there were about 600 total riders.

There was a total of about 4,000 feet of climbing , but it actually seems less than that. There was one significant climb at mile 11 (about 6 miles long) and another at mile 50, but the grade was such that it wasn't too punishing. Other than that it was mostly rolling hills, with very few long flat areas.

Temps were great until the lunch stop, when it really started to heat up. The last 25 miles were miserable, as I am not used to riding in anything hotter than 75 degrees. Add not a drop of shade to that and I was one hurtin unit. Hobbled into the last rest stop at 14 mph, but finished a bit stronger thanks to grabbing the rear wheel of a strong clydesdale.

One thing they had going was there were more SAG wagons riding the course than any I have seen. It seemed like every 20-30 minutes one went by. The food was sub-par, so I ate mostly potato chips (for the salt) and fruit.

You guys didn't miss a whole lot. However, If the CG crew ever assembeld for a ride, it would be fun here, simply because there was absolutely no traffic and you could take as much road space as you wanted to spread out and talk. Plus it wasn;t too challenging as far as elevation gain goes, so it wouldn't be quite as obvious how poor shape I'm really in.