Legacy Parkway Tour 2008

Yay me!

Here are my results for this race. Below is a screenshot of the overall top eight riders. You can get to this page if you fiddle with the website. But, it doesn't look like I can give you a link that will work.


There was a total of 715 people who registered and finished this race.

One of my last unreached goals this year was to break 23 mph average in a time trial or solo ride of at least 20 miles or so. I have been wanting for years to do the World Senior Games in St. George. But, as this year ticked along I could see that I probably didn't have the vacation days to spare. Right now, I have 2 vacation days left for the year and I would probably need to use 2 days to do the Senior Games. I have to keep some time available in case someone else in the ward passes away and I have to conduct a funeral. This isn't an idle preoccupation. We have more than 30 people in the ward over the age of 80 and 9 over the age of 90. Interesting thing is most of those over 90 still come to their meetings! But, that's a story for another time.

I thought I might end up doing this ride by myself. But, When it came down to it Cliff, Eric, Craig and Teal Buchi and Jeff Barton participated. Although The Buchis and Jeff were too late to register.

Anyway I decided to do this race and try for a new best speed even though it was not a time trial. It is a lot easier to go fast in a race. But, I did so much faster than I was expecting that I'm calling it good.

There were a lot of people at this event. We arrived with only about 5 minutes to go and we squeezed into the middle of the start. So there were probably at least 300 people in front of us. This wasn't a big deal because those who registered had timing chips so your time didn't start until you crossed the start line. However, it was quite frustrating initially because there were A LOT of people in front who went quite slow and spread out all over the road making it VERY difficult to get up to speed and stay there for a while.

Anyway, once we were able, I got going about as fast as I could and just tried to hold on without exploding. I led a pack for most of the way out and then came upon a couple of guys I thought were going at a good rate of speed. I settled in with them for a while. But, then realized they weren't going fast enough. So, I tried to make it to the next group ahead.

I was on a guy's tail from about mile 7 to about mile 9 and then took a turn pulling up to the turn around. I was pretty well tuckered at the turn around and just fell into the back of a group of 6 riders with Cliff right in front of me. The four at the front took turns in the lead and didn't seem eager to include Cliff and me in the rotation. So we stayed back and let them do the work.

I hit something in the road at about mile 16 and briefly prayed that I wouldn't get a pinch flat. I must be living right because my tire did go flat after I got back home.

We came upon a large group of riders at about mile 17. I was a little surprised they were ahead of us because I hadn't seen that many people turn around and coming back before we got to the half way point. There was an electronic timing loop at the halfway point so you couldn't cheat by turning around early. I suspect some of this large group a) wasn't registered/didn't have a timing chip, b) didn't go all the way to the half way point before turning around. We stayed with this group for about two miles and then pushed a little ahead. At one point someone in the group dropped a water bottle and I'm surprised it didn't cause a big wreck. As it was it was a little hairy riding with them.

When we came to the finish. I thought briefly about sprinting. But, didn't feel any great need to pass anyone else. As it was I wouldn't have been able to make it to the podium anyway with a sprint. Cliff crossed ahead of me but must have crossed the start a little further ahead of me because my overall time was slightly better than his. It seemed there were probably 20 or so riders who finished before me. But, they must have started way before me or not registered because the Milliseconds people say I came in 5th overall. I was faster than anyone over the age of 39. My power output averaged about 220 watts!