Rider Recap - Adam

-- Submitted by Project 11 Member, Adam --

Despite some weather concerns, the Sea Gull Century turned out to be a great ride for Project 11! Eric and I completed the 100-mile century, Tim Laupert, Uncle Greg and Uncle Larry completed the 60-mile ride, and Mary Ann, Rose, and Dani completed ~30 miles of riding. Congrats to all of the participants and thanks to the spectator crew!

Eric and I saddled up and departed the start line at approximately 7AM. We encountered some rain and soggy conditions for the first few hours, nothing major but enough to make curves at 20+mph a little more interesting. The first half of the ride went very smoothly, and we hooked up with some fast pacelines to make great time. Definitely the fastest I’ve gone in a group setting on the bike. The century course was some flat, picturesque countryside to cycle through. A lot of the fields had some kind of plant that was turning yellow in them, reminding me of the quintessential Tour de France snapshot of cyclists going through rows of sunflowers. Alas, our major mechanical trouble came about 5 miles from the Assateague Island rest stop when Eric got a flat tire. There must have been something nasty on the road because we saw what seemed like dozens of similar incidents in this section of the race. After having a couple of CO2 cartridges discharge on us, we got rolling again. At Assateague we turned into a vicious headwind, and things got difficult pretty quickly. Perhaps a sign of the difficulty was that both Eric and I turned down pie and ice cream at the last rest stop. This may be one of the only times in my life I didn’t feel like eating pie. But we pushed on, and crossed the finish line at approximately 5 hours and 18 minutes of pedaling time, a personal record for me and close to Eric’s PR! As Eric and I relaxed in the finishing area, Eric was randomly picked out of the crowd to be interviewed by the local news station! Great publicity for Project 11!

But I think the biggest effort of the day came from Uncle Larry and Greg. These guys did 60 miles on what they described as a “continuous uphill” (Eric and I encountered on such obstacles, but it was a different course) and they did it on minimal training. That’s true grit and determination, great job guys!