100 Miles of Nowhere: View-of-Seattle-Skyline Division
Five of us in Seattle joined in on the 100 Miles Of Nowhere, and for the second year the weather was good enough to have it on our roof deck: sunshine, cool breeze, views!
We did our best to minimize the time on the rollers (you know, for the sun) so we were all on big Kreitlers and we all finished under three hours.
Thank you, Fatty, for putting this event on, and thank you TwinSix for putting together such a great swag bag and supporting us so well! You really make this a fun time, and for a great cause!
Observations:
- The first 20 miles are a LOT easier than the last 20 miles.
- You sweat sunscreen off your body pretty quickly.
- Four sets of rollers + one trainer on a roof deck pretty much make a house uninhabitable.
- My wife was a fantastic host, allowing us to spend increasing amounts of time complaining about actually doing this again. Plus drinks and pizza at the end – perfection!
We had a great time! I’ll be there again next year (once I forget the misery!)
– Tom W, Seattle
Comment by NYCCarlos | 05.11.2010 | 9:51 am
is it uninhabitable because of the noise? I’ve never actually ridden rollers, but I’m imagining them as a fairly non-quiet apparatus.
Comment by jever98 | 05.11.2010 | 10:03 am
Disk wheels? I like the aero mindset!
Comment by Lisa | 05.11.2010 | 10:19 am
What an awesome view!! I could workout to that all the time!
Comment by briebecca | 05.11.2010 | 10:30 am
Under 3 hours??! Did you do a metric century??
Comment by Rose | 05.11.2010 | 10:31 am
Wow – incredible weather and view. You can even see Mt. Rainier. What a day and what a great cause! Way to go!
Comment by Quentin | 05.11.2010 | 11:16 am
“Under 3 hours??! Did you do a metric century??”
I was thinking the same thing.
Comment by TomW | 05.11.2010 | 11:53 am
No, we did a full 100 miles, 100.02 was where my computer stopped. It was just about managing the resistance – big rollers = low resistance, and we all had 53×11 gears on our bikes. Most of the ride I was doing around 37mph. Cheating? You be the judge. We did adhere to the “nowhere” part of the theme exactly.
@NYCCarlos: Yes, the rollers up there rumble a bit. They’re (mostly) quiet, but not when you get several sets rolling at that speed.
Comment by alan | 05.11.2010 | 11:56 am
Not only fast riders but good guys all!
Comment by TomW | 05.11.2010 | 12:00 pm
@jever98: Two of the guys (including the disk wheel) had race numbers on their bikes.
Comment by NoTrail | 05.11.2010 | 12:03 pm
Maybe it was a collective distance in three hours. :) My kind of century!
Comment by ChrisB | 05.11.2010 | 12:16 pm
It was a full 100 miles, at Tempo wattage. Friction and Resistance Management became the underlying strategy in order to keep the RPM high and speed legal. We did have a tailwind if that counts as cheating, and Guy’s Sub Zero Zipp disc gave him a distinct advantage with the yaw angle at 12 degrees out of the NW. The wind changed heading and I had to ride directly into a block headwind, and stayed in a tuck for half the ride. At the end, we logged over 500 miles collectively and went through 15 packets of dzNuts, and half a bottle of Noxzema.
Comment by Tom W (Seattle) | 05.11.2010 | 8:29 pm
Here’s a better story of this ride:
http://www.criminale.com/blog/2010/05/11/100MilesOfNowhere2010.aspx
Comment by Martin Criminale | 05.12.2010 | 8:03 am
Nice Tom! Thanks for this write-up!