Sunday, October 2, 2011

Pittsburgh River Valleys 200 km - Ride Report

We had two finishers, one DNF, one DNS.  Dan Blumenfeld reported on his DNF on the email list.

Congratulations to Dan Golderg on his first successful brevet riding a fixed gear bike!

The day started as warm as it would get, around 50 F.  The ride along Freeport road to Culmerville was pleasant.  The section beween Culmerville and Butler is among the most pleasant on this route.  But as Dan B reported, that is when it started to rain.  It rained steadily mostly through the day, tapering off a bit near the end for a while, then picking back up.

Dan G was a good sport when soon after the second control south of Butler, I missed a turn and rolled off the ridge the wrong directly into Butler, so we had a bonus hill to climb.

Dan G noted the abundance of hills on the route circa mile 60, when we nearing but not quite at the end of the abundance of hills between miles 60 and 75.

We had head winds pick up particularly after Cranberry toward Midland, so I was looking for tailwinds on the return.  They didn’t show up initially, with wind out of the north.  We did get some after Rochester.  The mile of milled road after Rochester was paved this week, and we had a blocked off lane of 51 to ourselves.

It was a great day to experience the combination of rain, mid-40’s and hills, if you were looking for that in the safe setting of a 200 km to experience same.

With the rain, the trail was largely free of people from its start to Millvale. That is a pleasant low-stress entry into the city, as long as it is an off season day (last week after a Pitt game was a much different experience.

The before ride snacks were cookie's from Jean-Marcs and afterward we had pizza.

I thought it was an aberration last week, but the route comes up a mile or two short in this instantiation.

2 comments:

  1. DNS ::== did not start. Someone that said they were going to ride, but let me know day of they didn't. I used acronym here only to let people see it in use.

    By the way, on the Google group, Dan B mentioned he had his first "official" RUSA DNF. Just to explain, there is no official RUSA DNF. I report to RUSA only the number of riders that start and the names of the riders that finished. i.e. RUSA knows if DNF happens, but not the names.

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