Cherry Hill: Post Ride

Overall: A good, hard, fast ride on top notch equipment.

I'm glad I did the planning I did for this Cherry Hill ride, as I ended up having a very enjoyable ride. Here are the things that went well:

I woke up on time, and caught the train I intended to take. I was hydrated and properly fed at the start.

I was dressed properly. When I left, it was 45 F outside. When I arrived, it was 68 F. I was able to remove my rain jacket, arm warmers, and cycling cap en route to maintain a good thermal balance. I was always just the right temperature.

I was fueled properly. I forced myself to have a Clif bar and about a bottle of Perpetuem per hour. I certainly wasn't low on calories, though I was quite hungry on arrival.

I used the GPS properly. I figured out how to use the GPS's auto-routing feature natively from a Topo route (more later). I stayed on course, didn't get lost once, and even took some nice quiet connecting roads in some sections.

I was aero. Between the FP60s and the aero bars, I was comfortably holding 23 MPH into a head-crosswind.

Of course, there are a couple of improvements that I could have made:

I needed more water. Four bottles of Perpetuem is just not enough fluid. I would have liked another three bottles of clean water while riding.

I got lots of flats. This was due to the filthiness of US 130: I got two glass flats, and one wire flat. Each one carried a roughly 15 minute penalty. They were unavoidable. If I attempt a ride like this again, I'll run some kevlar tire liners and suck up the 51g of additional rotating weight.

It's kind of scary that the ride panned out almost exactly as I thought it would. The roads, empty at 6am, were getting crowded around noon. I got flats in exactly the manner I would have suspected.