Cinderella 2009 (64 miles)

This weekend was the annual Cinderella metric century. I think this is the fourth year I’ve done this ride, and while I usually ride this one solo, this year I rode with a colleague who is training for the SF-LA AIDS ride this summer. She was also nice enough to give me a ride to the starting line (in Dublin/Pleasanton) since I’m currently car-less. Thanks Sharon!

In order to beat the bottleneck at the parking lot, we headed out pretty early and were in Pleasanton by 6:45 or so. It still took 20 or 30 minute to wind through the parking lot maze, but we were checked in and on the road by about 7:30.

The temperature was surprisingly chilly when we started out.. a guy passing by said it was 42 degrees. I was glad I had brought my leg warmers and ear warmers, but was still a bit cold throughout the day. Other than the cool temperature, it was a lovely day for a ride. It was very sunny and just a moderate breeze blowing mostly from the north. This meant that when we got to the standard “wind tunnel” part of the route, it actually wasn’t that bad. That part of the route travels mostly west with a few northerly jogs, so there were short patches of dealing with the wind, but not too bad.

My challenge was my continuing problem with my Dolce saddle. You might recall that last month I had bought a new Specialized Ruby saddle and had been initially happy at the lack of soft tissue pain. But then my sit bones ended up sore after 30 miles. So… I decided I just couldn’t ride that saddle on the Cinderella. Instead I fell back to my Brooks saddle that I had taken off the Terry. The Brooks was fine in terms of sit bones… no pain there. But after about mile 20 I started feeling it in the soft tissue. It got a little better near the end of the ride (or maybe I just had enough nerve damage to no longer feel pain?) but it’s definitely not going to work out long term. Back to the drawing board saddle-wise.

Last year I completed this ride in about 4 hours and 40 minutes (that’s time in the saddle). This year I didn’t push as much, since I was riding with my colleague who’s a little bit slower than me, although not really by much. I felt great pretty much the whole ride, with a little fatigue setting in around mile 50. But my cycle computer tells that that I had 5 hours and 25 minutes of active riding time! Now I’m thinking that 10 minutes of that time was actually walking back to the car after the expo, but still. That’s pretty slow.

Speaking of the expo, our friends at Rivendell had a booth this year. I don’t remember seeing them there before. They were showing off a couple of new models including a replacement for the Bleriot called the Sam Hillborne. About $2000 for a complete bike, and it looked real nice. I think I convinced my coworker to go visit them and talk to them about a new bike.

This was weird: we were riding through rural Livermore in the early part of the ride when we passed by a police officer pulling a blue tarp over a dead horse. It was very strange.. this big animal near the side of the road, with its hooves sticking out under this tarp. I noticed broken car glass around the area, so supposed a car ran into the horse..somehow. Googled it and apparently a pickup truck ran into the horse that had wandered into the road.


Total Distance: about 64 miles
Elevation gain: 23000 feet
Elapsed time: 5 hours and 15 minutes