Tour de Palm Springs - CycleCentury

Total fun! I kept a good group ride effort, and kept the calories coming with extra Gatorade powder, and a little bit of stuff from the sag stops. I avoided the problem at Poway of over-drinking. I did sort of hit the wall at about mile 95, but so did everyone else I was with.

I rode nearly all of the century with solid riders. Out on the Dillon Rd. rollers, a group of guys from Idaho (wearing George's kits) were like machines. I usually drop A riders out there on the aerobars, but these guy were strong and fast, they kept reeling me back in whenever the road pitched up. The Idaho guys were really impressive, they took solid pulls side by side in pairs, and peeled off to the right and left. I managed one good pull with them, then got dropped a few minutes later. The pack opened a 1/4 mile gap, but me and a young Cervelo roady worked our butts off to reel them back in, with the strays from the pack in our draft. It was hard and awesome, pavement jiggle, salt and snot, just like body surfing your first big wave. We re-connected a bit before the truck stop at I-10.

I pretty much blew through the sags, so left the Idaho guys, and solo TT'd until I grabbed the wheel of a tandem, and not too much later, grabbed onto the huge group from Team Redlands when they went by. These guys were fit, and it was only by luck that I finished with them - they lost a few seconds when they missed a turn, hit a couple of lights wrong, and stopped for a flat.

One of the most entertaining things about the TdPS is the five loops funnel together onto the final few miles of the routes. It was a carnival atmosphere with the fast 100 mi cyclists gliding by a river of riders. There was every kind of cycle, including some with infants and dogs. The funnest one was a recumbent with sort of a poodle in the basket behind the rider's head. Another one had a pair of little dogs contentedly side by side in a handle bar basket.

Good, hard ride. Probably a pb in a century, but I know I can break 5 hours if I treat them seriously.

This is sort of a Woodstock event, and the weather always seems to be great. There are live bands seemingly everywhere - at sags and the start/finish. The sags are better-stocked than any I've seen.

The announcer said they had 10,000 people this year, and the town had an extra-great vibe with all those cyclists.