Wheel overlap - bad!

So it's not a hundie, it's called a century. This weekend I joined a group of friend on MS150 City-to-Shore Multiple sclerosis fund raiser ride. It's set up as a 75 mile ride on Saturday from Philly area to Ocean City NJ, and 75 mile ride back on Sunday.
However, on Saturday there is an optional 25 mile loop, to make it a full century, and a 175 mile weekend.

Needless to say we did the 100 miles on Saturday (and it hurt) and 75 on Sunday back.

It was rather uneventful, but fun and entertaining in it's own way. Rolling with a groupd of good friends, having good time. Seven of us met up at the start, in the early dawn hours, and after waiting thru a long staging we got underway. Having started pretty late (yes, many riders were underway with lights in the dark at 6 am or so) we were moving pretty slowly thru the traffic. Lance had a flat, but after that it was pretty smooth sailing for a while.

On both days, we hooked up with "Brooklyn" branch of Team Jearney. A group of pretty strong well organized riders, that ride at least one of the days in the matching Brooklyn jerseys last year, and in black and white version this year. They seem to always have a very well organized and very fast paceline, moving past most traffic like a freight train. Jumping on their line of already 10-15 riders with our 6 made for an impressive long train, and many more riders jumped on, so on saturday we were rolling a Loooong line!

Dave and Adam, opted to do 75 miles, Brian, Lance, Chris, Fletcher and myself went on to the century loop. It turned out to be a good choice. Lance was checking his computer and for the first 42 miles our average speed was only 16 mph, at the end of the 25 mile loop it was 18. So in 25 miles we increased our pace enough to offset 42 miles of slow moving enough to raise it by 2 mph. That's something. Early in the extra loop we picked up Scott, and 6 of us worked well together in a neat pace line, that must've helped a lot.

Of note and "entertainment" was one incident. I was drafting Scott (a fast rider we picked up on the extra 25 mile loop) in our little 7 men pace line. Either I was rolling a little too fast, or he slowed down a little bit, I don't know, but I let my front overlap with his rear, figuring, i'll coast and drop back in few second. Unfortunately for me, my holding a straight line skills were lacking, and I touched his wheel, disengaged, and instead of touching the brakes to drop back, I froze, touched more, and harder, lost ballance and went sverving into the middle of the road. I was all off balance, and the bike was flying all over the place. I galnced down and braced for the inevitable meeting with harsh asphalt. Lucky for me, fear is stronger than physics! I did not want to hit the ground. Somehow my foot was out of the pedal and I "tripoded" sliding my foot on the ground with both tires sliding all over the place as well. Don't know how I managed to stabalize the twitching handlebars, but in the end I rode it out!

That's about it. I'm not sold on the road riding as "fun", but it can be entertaining with the right group and under right curcumstances!

Pictures are in my buddy Chris's album