My first century of the 2011 cycling year is done: I completed the full route for the Tour de Palm Springs on Saturday. The day was a good one, generally. The morning started at a crisp 44 degrees, but warmed up rapidly. The organizers allowed riders to start in waves of a few hundred at a time. This is what it looked like at about 7:10 am:
A lot of riders didn't go through the formal start and got on the street without waiting. That was kind of a pisser, but it was probably all for the best: We were told that there were over 11,000 riders for the event--up from 7,800 last year--which meant that if everyone went through the start area as they should have, it would have taken forever to get rolling. Further, we were told that there were over 7,000 riders on the
century, let alone the metric or the other rides.
The first miles were a very sluggish stop-and-go through Palm Springs. After crossing the I-10, things opened up a bit and the ride became more fun. Here's what it looked like riding through the windmills along the 10:
With thousands of riders on the course, the first two rest stops were gigantic messes. I left the start at 7:30 (the course opened officially at 8:00, but there were tons of folks who left much earlier), and when I got to the first rest stop, it was badly backed up.
The second rest stop was pretty much the same. These photos really don't do the mass of humanity at these stops justice. Think of feeding time at the biggest koi pond you've ever seen, and then multiply it by a thousand.
The route was pretty easy, with all the notable climbing done before the first rest stop. Cycle traffic was a problem for the first quarter of the ride, and I saw three riders being tended to by ambulance crews. These folks seemed to be on the ground as a result of crashes, which were probably the result of the huge number of riders.
The longest stretch of the ride was along Dillon Road, which is a long, undulating strip of pavement through an attractive stretch of desert with picturesque mountains in the distance. This was far and away my favorite part of the ride. After turning off Dillon, the route became more urban, and somewhat less interesting. The route had a bailout for century riders, which would turn the cenntury into a 65-mile ride. prior to the ride, I was reasonably certain that I'd complete the full century, but I wasn't completely confident, so when the turnoff came up at about mile 35 and I felt okay, I got a boost of sorts. But by the time I arrived at the third rest stop, I was dragging pretty badly. The rest stop at mile 51 had ham & cheese sandwiches and peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, which was a vast improvement over the earlier stops, which had bananas, oranges, peanuts and M&M's--pretty sparse fare for a rest stop. The ham & cheese sandwich I ate helped pick me up
enormously. The pack had thinned out, too, and the rest stop was less crowded than the three previous ones.
Here's my 51 mile face....
I was feeling pretty good, and, after the 75-mile stop, I was considering riding straight through to the end. Then I dropped like a rock about 5 miles before the 91-mile rest stop. I had been drinking regularly, and also taking regular blobs of Hammer gel throughout the ride, but I just ran out of gas and struggled to get to the stop. They had run out of jelly and also ham, so I had a cheese sandwich and some horrifically sweet energy drink stuff (like liquid PEZ), the combination of which got me to the end of the ride.
I'm slow, so the ride took me all day. I rolled into the finish line at 4:55, as the sun had just set behind the mountains to the west of Palm Springs. It was a good and an enjoyable ride. Of the three centuries that I've completed to date, this was clearly the easiest for a beginner: all of the sustained climbing was done early, none of the climbing was hard, the route was very well marked, and the rest stops were located logically.
Positives:
- The route was interesting and fun to ride, with the desert scenery during the first half of the ride quite striking visually.
- All the climbing (and there were no tough climbs) was in the first quarter of the ride--so no struggling to climb when exhausted.
- Route was well marked.
- Event staff were very positive and friendly.
Negatives:
- Waaaaay too many riders, at least for the first quarter of the ride.
- First two rest stops were overrun with riders.
- A better variety of food at the rest stops would have helped. Maybe there was more and I arrived after the locusts had descended.
- Roads in this area were a mixed bag; some were great, and some clearly needed maintenance.
The numbers:
9:35 total time from start to finish
8:13 total ride time
3265' of climbing
105.1 miles (I got lost a couple times during the last ten miles of the ride--my fault for not watching what I was doing)
12.70 avg speed
All data taken from my trusty VDO MC 1.0+ cycling computer.
