I’ve been planning to ride the Portland Wheelmen’s Pioneer Century since I put it on my ride schedule last year.
The weather this week has been a bit “iffy” at best and I’m not one to purposefully go out and ride in the rain, call me a fair weather rider!
Woke up this morning and checked outside, wet roads and very cloudy, an ominous sign for the day ahead (who wants to ride wet all day? I sure don’t).
Discussed with Ellen and decided to temp fate – we packed our gear and went to Canby for the start of this early summer century.
The day started out drizzly, couldn’t really call it rain, more like “misting”. Low 60s for most of the ride, and as long as I kept pedalling, I was very comfortable. I did wear a long sleeve jersy (good choice for this weather!) that helped in keeping the chill off.
This century has a very challenging hill in the middle of the first 50 miles, by the time you reach the top, you are wishing for the end to come! (“kill me now” comes to mind). The descent is well worth the climb however, the old addage “what goes up, must come down” really applies here. My climbing speed on the “Q” is really slow (in the 5 mph range), on the descent, I had to keep feathering the brakes so I wouldn’t loose control – hitting speeds in the 40 mph range!
The “Q” handled very well (as expected), even with the 700c rear wheel. The folks at Inspired Cycle Engineering do make a great trike, even if it’s not a “custom” like my Micro, the “Q” is still worthy of the ICE name!
The second half of the ride, a 45 minute loop was a bit slower than the first half, taking almost the same ammount of time to do 45 miles as it did to do 55 miles with the big hill – that hill takes alot out of you!
One last note about the Pionneer. Your lunch is chicken fajitas and after the 100 miles, they are really yummy! (and I don’t usually like fajitas, then again, when you’re hungry, just about anything tastes good!)
Pioneer Century 2009
