Assault on Morrow Mountain – Recap

There must have been over 50 riders at the start. We nearly filled the Locust City Park parking lot. Jeff picked out a good route with just a little bit of traffic in some unavoidable spots. The weather started out great, and for those that finished early it stayed that way. I on the other hand got caught in some rain near the end of the ride.

About 15 miles in Jim asks me if my rear wheel is out of true, I say no, but notice that the back wheel is wavy. I stop and try to figure out what it is, after some playing around I notice a rattle. Wheels aren’t supposed to rattle! It sounded like a spoke nipple. I pull on a few spokes and wouldn’t you know, there was a broken spoke just at the threads. I waited for the SAG for about 5 minutes and Gary was kind enough to lend me his wheel. After some fiddling I was able to make the 9-speed cluster work with my 10-speed drive train in all but two gears.

Now I had to wait for the trailing group. Mind you I was in the leading group when all this happened. That group set a pretty fast pace, not anywhere near race pace, but fast nonetheless. About 15 minutes total just sitting on the side of the road cooling off until the trailing group rode by.

The road up into Morrow Mountain State Park and up to the summit is nice. It is tree lined and some sections are steep, although the highest grade I saw was 11.7% and that was before getting to the Park. The steepest section within the park was about 11.5%. Still very respectable grades to have to climb up and without the use of my inner chain ring, which I could never get to shift right with the 9-speed cluster. So that meant climbing in a 50/29T.

I got to see everyone in the lead group descending as I was starting up Morrow Mountain, but that was the last time I saw them all day. About mile 52 there was lightning in the sky and it started to rain, I thought I would be just ahead of the rain, but it caught up to me, so for the next 8 miles I got pelted with very big rain drops and ended up all soaked and cold, as the cloud cover chilled the air.

Still it was a great day for the ride. Many thanks to Jeff for putting this together and to Gary, who not only lent me his wheel so that I could do the ride, but for chauffeuring Jeff around all morning. If anyone else who rode today would care to add anything, all comments are welcome.

Here are the statistics I got today on my Garmin along with a route map and elevation profile:

Ride Time: 4:00:44
Mileage:  62.44 miles
Average Speed:  15.6 mph
Ascent: 4,184 feet (with 1 sec data smoothing > 0.2% grade)