Knotts Island Century
Waking up early is not a problem when you’re going to be spending the better part of the day riding a 100 miles. Today at 5:00 AM, it was out of bed in a hurry to go check the radar to see if there was any bad weather looming over Virginia Beach for the Knott’s Island Century. Radar looked perfect for the century, so off to pack the car and be out the door by 6:00. As we backed the car out to load up the bikes, we saw dark skies and felt a light drizzle. We didn’t even think twice to question the weather since there were no blips on the radar. Riding down I-64, we saw the skies get even darker and down came the rain. We drove to the site where the race started and it looked “iffy” but we were already there, so why not ride? The century riders rolled 27 miles to catch a ferry from Currituck to Knotts Island; the metric riders rode to Knotts Island to catch the ferry back to Currituck. Donna, Maggie, Susan and Claudia rode the Metric route and BJ, Julie, Laura and Ali rode the full century. So, as we were getting off the ferry, the metric crowd was waiting to board. It was great to see those very cool gals in their Vanderkitten kits smiling like it was Christmas.
The riders who chose to do the century gathered and we rolled at 7:00 for the 9:00 ferry. We had a nice warm up pace going since we didn’t want to be there too early for the ferry ride since we knew we would be on board for an hour. Once on the ferry, we took off our socks, wrung them out to dry and came up with innovative ways to spend our hour. We even
had a bird’s eye view of an osprey in her nest. After the ferry unloaded about 50 riders and their bikes, we all settled into our groups and knocked off the rest of the ride rest stop by rest stop. The weather got better as the day went on but lots of b
ikes will have to be cleaned tomorrow. Once back at the finish we enjoyed spaghetti and salad and all left before the skies opened again. This is one of my favorite centuries and a good training ride for this time of the year.
One of the more memorable parts of the ride was when I decided to time trial in for the last 5 miles. I just felt I had strong legs and wanted to see how fast I could go. I took off at the last turn and looked back a few minutes later to see that no one had followed. I was thinking I was pretty hot stuff dropping all of those fast folks until they rolled in and told me my husband had a flat and that I was the only one who didn’t wait for him while he changed his tire. I guess I’ll be delegated to the TIME OUT CHAIR for that!!!
Podium Cat
The riders who chose to do the century gathered and we rolled at 7:00 for the 9:00 ferry. We had a nice warm up pace going since we didn’t want to be there too early for the ferry ride since we knew we would be on board for an hour. Once on the ferry, we took off our socks, wrung them out to dry and came up with innovative ways to spend our hour. We even
had a bird’s eye view of an osprey in her nest. After the ferry unloaded about 50 riders and their bikes, we all settled into our groups and knocked off the rest of the ride rest stop by rest stop. The weather got better as the day went on but lots of b
ikes will have to be cleaned tomorrow. Once back at the finish we enjoyed spaghetti and salad and all left before the skies opened again. This is one of my favorite centuries and a good training ride for this time of the year.One of the more memorable parts of the ride was when I decided to time trial in for the last 5 miles. I just felt I had strong legs and wanted to see how fast I could go. I took off at the last turn and looked back a few minutes later to see that no one had followed. I was thinking I was pretty hot stuff dropping all of those fast folks until they rolled in and told me my husband had a flat and that I was the only one who didn’t wait for him while he changed his tire. I guess I’ll be delegated to the TIME OUT CHAIR for that!!!
Podium Cat
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