Ready or Not it's time for RiotGRRRaveL!

Gravel road on RiotGRRRaveL route
Well, tomorrow is the day of the RiotGRRRaveL race. I'm not quite as ready as I'd like to be but I can't do anything about that now. Come morning, I'll be packing up my bike and my family and I will be heading to Northfield to pick up my ride partner, Lisa. We plan to leave Lisa's around 7:00 then drive over to Hastings (about a 40 minute drive) to Emily's Bakery to pick up our bib numbers, meet some of the other riders and get a pastry!

After that, we head to the ride start location, a church at the edge of town, unload our bikes and get all nervous, I mean, get ready to go.

At 9:30 the race begins - and off we will go! There are about 100 riders signed up, 80 of them are women (the race was created, in part, to get more women riding/racing gravel). At times, I get pretty nervous about the race but I'm just telling myself I'm going on a big bike ride with a lot of fun people and that helps.

My husband, Owen, my son, Ryan, and I drove the race route this afternoon. The route is a mixture of gravel types from nice to ride to pretty loose. There are some hilly portions and the ride be challenging. That said, it's a pretty route with lots of great scenery and the beginning of the ride and end of the ride are on great, straight, almost flat, roads.
One of the gravel roads along the RiotGRRRaveL route 
Because of all of the rain we've been getting, one part of the route is underwater so the race crew has worked up a new route and is getting new cue sheets ready for us. I can imaging they are quite busy this evening! My guess is, given what I saw of the route today, that they can pretty easily route us around the underwater portion of the race.

The ride route is 33 miles long. As I mentioned, from what I saw today, it will be a challenging ride but I think it's doable. I would be better off if I could have gotten some more gravel miles in but this past week but I was down with the stomach flu for a couple of days and then the rain kept me off the roads. Oh well. Though I haven't gotten in any real long rides so far this year, my longest thus far was a 27 mile road ride, in past years I have ridden 70 miles in a day (road ride) so I know I'm capable of going far. The hills worry me a bit. And the gravel. And the distance. I guess that's pretty much the whole ride. Oh well. At least now I have my bike adjusted well and I am feeling more comfortable riding on gravel. But, best of all, I know I have a great riding companion in Lisa and I will bet that the energy of riding with about 80 women will carry me along quite well.

All right. Time for go. Best thing I can do for myself right now is get a good night's sleep!
Nice scenery along the RiotGRRRaveL route




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Change in Plans

Image
My kids, Rose and Ryan, started a theater day camp today called Young People's Theater Workshop (YPTW). YPTW is a program put on through the Northfield Arts Guild  during which the kids, grouped by age, write a play, rehearse it, and then perform it at the end of the three week session. Rose loves the camp and this is her fourth year. In her first year I saw a huge change in her confidence from the beginning of the session to the end. She has grown each year since and I expect she will benefit from the camp again this year. Ryan has never been in YPTW and has been somewhat reluctant to go. But, to save on gas (it's a 30 mile round trip to town), make our schedule easier and give me time to work, Owen and I decided that Ryan should give YPTW a try. Given how good the program has been for Rose, we're hoping Ryan will benefit from the program as well. I dropped the kids off this morning and right off the bat Ryan found two friends from his class at Greenvale. He found...
Read more

Making tracks

Image
I just looked out my office window and saw my snowshoe tracks in the snow. For some reason they surprised me. Seeing them I had concrete evidence that I actually have been getting out on my snowshoes every day. That I've actually been going somewhere. And, for some reason, I find this comforting. I've been fighting my 30 Days of Snowshoeing commitment and am kind of mad at myself for creating the challenge for myself. I haven't wanted to get out every day and snowshoe. It's cold outside. I don't like putting on my snowpants, my hat, scarf, gloves, jacket. Perhaps because I'm doing the challenge alone, unlike the 30 Days of Biking challenges where hundreds of other people biked every day and helped motivate each other, I don't really feel like it matters that I'm doing this. And I've lost momentum and motivation and simply want to sit inside and read a book. Or sleep. Or watch Monk and Cake Boss on Netflix. But I keep snowshoeing. Every day. Ev...
Read more

A Little Bike Schooling on the B Ride

I'll be honest with you, my two main motivations for riding my bike any distance are coffee and conversation. A good workout is also a motivator but going really fast is not. I'm more of a slow and steady - okay, really slow and not that steady - sort of bicyclist. But for months now I've wanted to join in on a group ride. From what I've heard people ride their bikes, chat away the miles and stop somewhere for a cup of coffee mid-way or at the end of the ride. Sounds like my kind of ride. Right? Maybe not. Most of the group rides I've heard about promise average speeds of 18 to 20 miles per hour or more and go 40 or more miles. Some sound brutal and talk about hill climbs and sprints. Granted, these are the "A" rides, rides geared towards competitive riders, riders who want to push their limits. "B" rides are supposed to be slower, "C" rides even more so but I've seen some C rides that sound too fast for me, some B rides with leng...
Read more