2009 Tour De Moore Century Ride

Last Monday I did the 2009 Tour De Moore Century. This was my first year doing the hundred mile ride, before I had only done the 50 mile route, and in 2005, the 28 mile. Before Monday, I hadn't ever rode more than 80 miles, so I didn't know how I would feel after 100.


I lined up to the start of the Ride with about 150 other people. Most of them weren't racers, but about 20 of them were. Of the 20, there was 1 0r more cat. 1's, at least 3 cat. 2's, and the rest were 3's or 4's 0r 5's. The ride started easy and was never very hard for the 1st 50 miles, although it was pretty fast. At mile 50 the pack was down to less than 50 people, and I was staying in the top 20, not the top 10 because position wasn't as important as it would be in a race. Pretty soon there was a 3 person breakaway, and a cat. 2 named Sam bridged up to them. It was a pretty serious move, and I started helping in a paceline to pull them back. We cam close to catching them at maybe mile 60, but then we sat up. I really wanted to catch the break already, so I went to the front, but nobody would even get on my wheel to follow me, so I was just dangling out in front for a while.


Due to the lack of chasing the break got a minute and a half advantage by mile 70, when more serious attacks came. There would be attack after attack, and I followed nearly all of them. At mile 90, Some riders attacked through dangerous parts of the course, and I was tempted to follow them but didn't. One of them bridged up to the break, which was just Sam at this point, and held it to the end. In the field, we were continuing to watch eachother, and I was really wishing that we had worked together better and could have caught the break. After a while, we reached the bottom of the Conneticut Road hill, the biggest in the area at 270 feet. The first half was steady but the last half there was an attack, and I just couldn't follow it after 100 miles of accelerations, which wasn't really suprising given I had never done nearly 100 miles ever before. I got 6th, 3rd out of the pack in the end.

Here are the statistics of the ride:

103 miles
4:36:30
22.6 average speed
No wattage data; I didn't use my powermeter.

So, that was the 2009 Tour De Moore. In my next post, I'll put up pictures of the ride.