Strawberry Century

QUICK STATS	This Ride	2010 Cumulative
Distance	101 miles	2,023 miles
Elevation Gain	3,239 feet	20.28 miles
Average Moving Speed	17.0 mph	15.0 mph
Dog Bites	0	1

We did this ride last year and we enjoyed it then too. Weather was perfect. A bit cool to start out, but my arm warmers were just enough to keep me warm. And simple to shed later.

We pushed it fairly hard. Before the ride I had noticed that we had a fairly high moving speed on this ride last year (16.9 mph), compared to other rides. Partly because it is relatively flat, but also because we rode with a 20-person peloton for about 20 of the early miles. A significant difference to how we ride now: we don't draft at all, for various reasons, which I won't get into here.

Anyway, I had that 16.9 mph "moving speed" number in my head and wanted to beat it.  Of course last year we also took much longer at stops than this year, so if it were a race we creamed our last-year-selves. But the moving speed number doesn't take that into account, so I just wanted to do "better" this year using any metric.

Maps showing all rides: 2010 Rides • 2009 Rides • All Rides

Long story short, as you can see from the stats above, we did barely increase our average moving speed. And it wasn't easy. Much of the last 20 miles or so had a headwind so we struggled to do it.

Oh, my iBike wireless failed for a mile or so, so the actual distance is a bit off in the data image below, but close enough.