Fifteen Rides: Amtrack Centery Ride Party Report

I'll start by saying that I was planning on taking it easy for this century. That didn't happen. When Joseph called and said he was interested in "Going along for the ride" I knew it was going to become a hammer fest. and it was. We managed to finish in just under 5 hours saddle time and our average speed was 20.6 mph. I saw people I know, there was a pretty good sized group of PAA riders, and met new folks as well. The weather was beautiful, the temperature perfect and the scenery was great.

Unfortunately because of the pace of the ride that's about all I can tell you. We went on some roads the pointed south (generally) went by some trees and some hills and on the freeway and through some cool towns and rode by the ocean and... yea that's about all I can remember. Oh, I can remember something else, how my heart felt like it was going to explode out of my chest most of the ride.

The pace we set was pretty hard core. For much of the ride as I looked at my Garmin (while it was working) our speeds were 21-24 mph. Significant sections of road were covered at 25-30 mph and some descents that were faster. A few sections of climbing knocked the pace down to 12-15, and there were a few sections where we managed to keep the pace a nice and peaceful 18 mph.

For pretty much the whole second half of the ride we worked with a couple from Arizona who turned out the be the party marshals on the train ride home. They were really strong, and the wife could climb like nothing else. As she and Joseph would bolt of the front, her husband Rod and I would just kind of hang back and chill. We rolled into San Diego pretty early, around 12:20. We were the first group of riders in with the exception of one guy in a Georgia Tech jersey. Since Centuries are rolling starts I'm almost never the first one in, so I was pretty impressed.

That's about all I can tell you about the ride.

The train ride back, Well, that's a different story. We'll let the pictures do the talking.