Last-Minute News

Updated September 18, 2007

Next Year’s Dates

We can hear people thinking.

“The LDC’s gonna be August 30. Let’s see. That’s the same old Saturday before Labor Day, but what’s the LDC? Doesn’t that stand for Labor Day Century? Sounds like they’re just going back to the old name. But then they’re running the Sunrise Century too? Three weeks later—on September 20?”

It would confuse us too. 

Shorter Rides

The LDC* will comprise a metric century and at least one shorter ride. It’ll almost surely start at eight. There’ll be no century that day, so we can send everybody off at the same time. Yes, we're adopting a mass start—though hardly your father's mass start.  We went to a rolling start this year, and it worked. Next year, we’ll implement a “stutter start.”

Stutter start? That just means we’ll send everybody off by rows, holding each row back for a fraction of a second to allow the row ahead to pull out a safe gap before letting the next row go. We were already convinced this procedure would give everybody more maneuvering room and reduce overtaking, the cause of most if not all of this year’s accidents. We believed it would actually speed up the start too. A very brief delay imposed on each row in turn, we thought, would enable a smoother and faster getaway. Most of the time wasted during mass starts stems from all the untangling riders have to endure. We were confident that a stutter start would allow every rider to reach Mile 2 (and probably Mile 1) sooner than he would after an ordinary unsupervised start.

Does this really work? 

We had no idea the Hotter’n Hell was going to institute this same procedure one week before our event. Pure coincidence. The Texas folks call it a “phased start,” which is probably a better term. Anyway, it most definitely worked. HHH had 11,205 riders this year. Even when they’ve had smaller fields, it has taken an hour to clear the starting area. This year, thanks to the phased start, it took 20 minutes.  

But the chief benefit is safety.

Safety During and After a Mass Start

There’ll inevitably be overlap between rides. A slow rider on a shorter route will find himself being overtaken by metric riders traveling at high speeds. That’s the way it goes at almost all rides. We’ll exhort everyone to exercise utmost care. We’ll caution slower riders to pull over for faster riders and admonish faster riders to use maximum caution when overtaking and passing slower riders. The crowd might be smaller, since we’re splitting our traditional event. Some of the very fastest riders won’t come for the LDC. On the other hand, we expect a great many of our century riders to use the LDC as a training run. The metric, after all, includes more than half the stretches they’ll ride later in the month.

A Slightly Different Philosophy

In 1986, we tacked shorter rides onto the SC at the last minute, but as its name has always implied, the original event was intended to be, above all, a century—albeit with auxiliary rides appended. On the other hand, we've gone out of our way to avoid giving our other riders any reason to feel second-rate. Now, the LDC is for them, but each year from now on, once the LDC goes into the history books, the CSRC will focus its full attention on the century, the concept that inspired this enterprise in the first place. 

The Sunrise Century Moves to a Cooler Date

The century will abandon its traditional weekend and move to the third Saturday in September. Usually, the third Saturday. September has five Saturdays some years (as it does this year). On those years, the SC will go off on the fourth Saturday—but always on the third Saturday after the LDC. That weekend promises cooler temperatures with a negligible risk of a frosty morn or blazing heat. Truth is, cycling's a summertime sport. Sure, we start in the spring and ride into the autumn, but while runners come out in the fall, and some cyclists ride through the winter, most riders ride less and less with the onset of chilly weather. Highs on the third weekend after Labor Day can reach the nineties, but only well into the afternoon.  Depending on the date a particular ride Saturday falls on, normal lows range from 66° to 69°. Normal highs range from 78° to 80°. Chances of rain are as low as they get all year, as low as in October. Typical winds may well be the lightest of the year. Sunrise can come as late as 6:42 a.m. Look at the forecast for this Thursday, September 20 (366 days before next year's century, since 2008 is a leap year). Fifty-nine degrees at seven, 85 at noon, and a high of 86—warmer than the historical mean, but the overwhelming consensus even among Republican climatologists is that the climate's changing. We may have to do this thing on Christmas Day one of these years.

No other route will be ridden on century weekend.  No metric riders will be waiting in the wings, gnashing their teeth to get started, and century riders won't need to beat them to Highland Road—where the two courses merge. Consequently, we won't need to start the century at the crack of dawn. An eight o'clock start would mean our Knoxville friends, who’ve had to leave home at three wouldn’t have to leave until four! Clarksville has plenty of hotels. At least one offers deep discounts to riders. And Nashville is just forty minutes southeast on I-24.

Non-Holiday Weekends

Maybe the NFL, NASCAR, and MLB are onto something. They’ve monitored attendance patterns for years and know what they’re doing. Major events are held on Sundays for a good reason—partly because some people work on Saturdays. And people have more time between the end of a Sunday ride and bedtime than between quitting time Friday and bedtime. It can be a little rough to head out for Clarksville the moment you get off work—tougher than driving home while still exulting over that personal best you just scored. But we want to show respect to the Mennonites and the Amish—not to mention the more numerous Christians of more familiar denominations—who live along our byways. Originally, we did schedule the event on Sundays, the first Sunday following Memorial Day.  We moved to Labor Day Saturday to allow everybody to whip himself into shape for 100 miles and to recuperate Sunday and Monday. Many rides run on Sundays, and most are on non-holiday weekends. Clearly, cyclists recover from 100-mile rides in plenty of time to go to work on Mondays after Saturday rides. We got big crowds on Sundays despite the fact everybody had to go back to work the very next day. 

Saturdays are fine, but holidays are family times and vacation times. We thought we should give mom (or dad) and the kids a break from your obsession. Why hit the highways, hotels, and restaurants when they’re maxed out?  It's true that a cyclist from Minnesota, who happened to visit his Clarksville in-laws every Labor Day, became a regular participant, one we wouldn’t have picked up if not for his wife’s Labor Day pilgrimage. But to be fair, we can point to lots more people who’ve always wanted to ride with us and never have. They say things like, “Wish the ride wasn’t on a holiday. We go to Destin every Labor Day."

*The Sunrise Century has had six different names. Three of them were abbreviated “LDC” or  “CLDC” (Clarksville Labor Day Classic). You could say we’re back to Labor Day Classic, but LDC is the name now, just as DVD is the correct designation for the ubiquitous optical (or data) disc storage medium. Argue, if you like, whether DVD stands for “Digital Versatile Disc” or “Digital Video Disc,” but that issue is now moot. DVD and LDC are no longer abbreviations. They’re names in their own right.

Updated September 2, 2007

The Crowd

We enjoyed another great turnout, though maybe no larger than last year’s. Let’s wait for the final count. Last year’s initial count proved lower than the actual number of riders who showed—though many paid to ride and then failed to make it to Clarksville.

Shorter Rides and Next Year’s Dates

The guy who was wrong about the feasibility of a paced peloton was prophetic about attendance, insisting that attendance wouldn’t suffer if we focused on the two popular distances. The Clarksville Sunrise Rotary Club is small, so he exhorted the membership to drop shorter rides in order to ensure the quality of the century and the metric century. Shorter rides garner significantly fewer riders yet require inordinate efforts, because less-experienced cyclists suffer mechanical, athletic, and navigational problems far out of proportion to their numbers. But from the beginning, the club has wanted to serve the novice and juvenile market, whether or not it contributes its share to Rotary causes. The solution is the return of the LDC next Labor Day weekend, replete with two or even three short rides plus a metric century—one exactly 61.14 miles long, if at all feasible. We’ll mount the century on a cooler date as a stand-alone event. But disregard the October 4 date announced in the brochures we handed out yesterday. We don’t want to put on an event on the same weekend as the longstanding and popular Jack and Back—or on Livestrong weekend October 11 and 12. Or on a date subject to downright chilly weather. That leaves late September. We’ll announce the date soon.

Customer Satisfaction

We relish your generous feedback. Thanks for the plaudits. We’re getting complaints too—but only about the wind.

The Weather

Besides the wind, the first Saturday in September was warmer than it was the last two years. But then 2005 and 2006 were amazingly cool. Yesterday’s temperatures were a few degrees above the historical average for the date.

Radios and Telephones

Were there solar flares yesterday? Everybody, including our intrepid radio club volunteers, who have worked this event since 1986, struggled with poor connections yesterday. Cell phones wouldn’t reach from places they ordinarily reach, and handheld commercial walkie-talkies fared no better. Even the radio club’s more powerful and sophisticated equipment faltered, but we were able to dispatch medical help. and motorcyclists and the peloton pace car passed information to rest stop staff to the approach of riders in some instances. Not having radio contact with the peloton caused hassles for the pace driver. Website and telephone pleas for a volunteer to wear a radio won no taker. Neither did personal appeals for someone to wear a radio. Hard to blame them. Even the smallest unit weighs several ounces, and they’re bulky by cycling standards. At the last moment, one good gentleman relented, but he was unable to hook up the equipment in the 30 seconds he had before the 6:30 launch.

Injuries

For the first time since the Clarksville Sunrise Rotary Club took over in 2004, there were some significant injuries—and among regular riders rather than in the pelotons. Three victims were hurt badly enough to require transport to a hospital. We regret that very much and wish all injured riders a speedy recovery and a happy return to our roads. It’s telling that the wrecks happened early on. Riders overtake each other more near the start than farther out. We won’t be surprised to learn the accidents occurred while the riders were passing.

The Train

The CSX railroad has been good to us. We provide a timetable of arrivals, and the railroad schedules their trains around us. What an extraordinary courtesy. But we may have failed to hold up our end of this arrangement according to the usual procedure. It seems that the ride official who contacted the railroad may not have spoken with the usual people this time. In Trenton, two lead peloton riders who had fallen off got cut off--along two  motorcyclists escorting the lead peloton. Fortunately, the train cleared the tracks just in time for Group 2 to cross without delay.

Fresh Pavement over Arrows

Not a dish we planned to serve. The eastbound lane of KY 294 wasn’t finished Friday as promised, but no one hung wheels on the edge. We mark the roads far enough in advance to leave time for pressing last-minute preparations. There was no way to repaint arrows in our usual numbers, but we think extra course marshals and signs kept people on course.

Records

We’re in the process of working up the story of the lead group. Look for it here soon, replete with a photograph of the survivors. As always, the early pace burned up some very strong athletes, the wind defeating all but the very strongest. Like Group 2, the lead peloton started breaking up early and soon diminished to three, led by the indomitable Kent Bostick. “What they achieved was truly a moral victory [over the wind],” said our peloton czar, referring to their 3:57:20 finish. This makes the third year in a row Sunrise riders have bettered four hours—just the three this year, by the narrowest margin yet, and despite a cruel wind. Many of us are convinced those three could’ve smashed the record on a day like we had in 2005. We also believe other people would’ve recorded up sub-fours.

The Pelotons

We obviously overstressed the requirements, and far fewer people lined up to try their luck than in 2005. Maybe that was a good thing. We had far fewer disappointments and near-calamities, but we’d like to see more qualified riders try. The second peloton seems to have been a failed experiment. The guy who was crazy to try it thinks so. It’s not that it was a failure from the standpoint of popularity. It ended up with about as many riders as the lead group. Execution, on the other hand, was an example of things that, suffice it to say, can occur in clusters.

Pace Car Blues

Caught fooling with a radio, he driver failed to start when Group 1 cleared the staging area, and some Group 2 guys and one impressive woman took the initiative and started without him. Once he caught up, the driver was unable to slow the early pace of the alert jackrabbit contingent, and they left small clusters in its wake. See? That’s what we meant when we mentioned clusters. The pace car driver had no choice but to escort the jackrabbits up front. The constituted the largest cluster. The service truck tried to supply water and Gatorade to the trailing clusters too but abandoned the effort after they fell far behind. These trailing riders might have been as strong as the jackrabbits, but most were magnanimous enough to tell us they didn’t think so themselves. They’d chosen to start farther back for that reason. Their numbers were too small to form effective “sub-pelotons,” so they fell ever farther behind.

The Folly of Trying to Pace Cyclists

They’re cyclists. They’re elite athletes. They’re inveterate competitors. You have to expect them to get excited at the start and push the pace. Which, of course, is exactly what they did. None of the pace driver’s exhortations seemed to influence them. Wiser heads had warned the mastermind behind the paced peloton, “These hotshot riders will blow you off when you try to control their pace. They’ll do as they damn well please.” Actually, we believe the riders chose the paced group to impose discipline on themselves. It’s not their fault we were unable to deliver the service we advertised. And let’s be fair to our hapless pace car driver too. It’s easy to drive behind a peloton. It’s quite another trick to hold a safe and effective distance in front of one. A couple of times during the early miles, the poor guy nearly collected the bunch he was leading, while trying to converse with motorcyclists riding alongside. He needed someone to handle the radio and table of checkpoint arrivals. He barely managed to scoot away seconds before they rear-ended him. Their shouted admonitions woke him up, and he adapted. He stopped trying to pace the group and resorted to giving them reports on their pace. This entailed speeding ahead to each intersection with a stopwatch and the table of ETAs posted see below and shouting, “You’re ahead. Ease up a little.” The group ran ahead of target arrival times for a while, but the wind seemed to blow from dead ahead, no matter which way the route wound, and it fell got a little behind through one rough patch and then got ahead again. Until KY 475.

The “Hills”

Two miles beyond Trenton, the pace man yelled that they were beginning eight miles of intermittent climbing before Elkton. He stood beside the road on the lesser of our two “real hills” and assured his charges that they wouldn’t see but one more. The guys and their stalwart woman companion attacked these hills, and that cost them dearly. By the time they reached Elkton, they didn’t have enough left to take advantage of the easiest and most enjoyable stretches on the course. Except one guy on a recumbent. He broke away and managed to stay on sub-four pace, eventually pedaling to a huge lead over his comrades. The pace driver and the supply truck relayed between him and the main group. But alone, the guy couldn’t maintain his quixotic campaign against the wind. Around Mile 75, the pace man had to tell him he’d fallen off the pace, so he decided to relax and enjoy the ride. Eventually, his peloton reeled him in, and he latched on. Only four guys and the woman remained, and then she too fell behind, though never far. She became the first woman finisher.

To be continued…

Updated August 31, 2007

Read These New Navigation Notices and Tell Others About Them

Our turn arrows indicate which way to turn at the next paved intersection or side road on the side the point to. We thought that went without saying, but you may not have seen early-alert arrows as early as many of ours. Once you get used to them, you’ll wish everybody used them. Most liked them last year, but a few who complained (but didn’t get lost). Their gripe? “We almost slowed down too soon.” We admit these early-early alerts are a little unorthodox, but they’re so sensible and readily comprehensible that many people weren’t explicitly aware of them. We’re talking about turn arrows placed very far ahead of turns. Sometimes, you’ll see an arrow and not be able to immediately see an intersection ahead—not in your immediate vicinity. Trust us: Trust the arrow. The turn it refers to is coming—over a hill (or two), around a turn (or three). It’s best not to turn before you get to one! OK, that was sarcastic, but to be serious, there won’t be an intervening road leading in the direction of an arrow before you get to the one it alerts you to. We lay down scads of reassurance arrows between turns, two or three times as many as any ride we know of. Instead of pointing them all straight ahead, we start pointing them in the direction of upcoming turns very far out from them. This lets you know you’re still on course and also gives you some bonus information: the direction of the next turn. If they’re so far out, how will you know when you really are right on or close to a turn? Easy. And so intuitive that all but a very few people got it last year with almost no conscious thought. By the time you’re within sight of a turn. arrows start appearing ever closer together—usually in clusters to get your attention—culminating in conspicuous spacing at each turn. If you’re half awake, you’ll instinctively steer your bike onto the right roads without giving a (conscious) thought to the process.

It’s hard to get lost here. It goes without saying that we don’t use unpaved roads. We also use no driveways, parking areas, or commercial-industrial accesses. We’ve bragged that we’ve painted so many reassurance arrows that you should see one about every quarter-mile. If you ride as much as a half-mile without seeing one of our arrows, we’ve said, you’re almost surely off course and need to backtrack till you find them again. For the most part, that’s still true, but as the man said, you can’t obviate every contingency (not his exact words). Such as last-minute repaving and course changes. Road departments in Tennessee and Kentucky have just put fresh pavement on several stretches. One’s being finished yesterday (Friday). The good news is smooth riding. The bad news is that they covered up our arrows. And when our measurement procedures, almost surely unique for a century course, showed that the original configuration yielded a few tenths less than 100 miles, we had to change the route at the last minute. Don’t worry. We’ve put down and are still putting down new arrows. We may not exceed the standard of better-marked courses on the affected sections, but the marking will be as good as you get anywhere. You just won’t get our usual profusion.

Our arrow, shown on the website and on all our brochures since 2005, is unique. There are other bike route marks on some of our roads, but they don’t look like ours. Ours are yellow for the century and white for the metric. Exceptions really shouldn’t even be mentioned, because you shouldn’t see them. But if you get badly lost, you could wander upon obsolete marks from prior courses. It would be a heroic undertaking to roll driveway sealer over 1000 arrows. We have done that in the vicinity of the new courses but not out of sight of them. Then there’s another sort of exception, again not pertinent if you pay attention and stay on course: color. Yellow and white, yes, but there are a few white arrows, perfectly valid ones, that used to be orange and may show it, albeit ever so slightly. They’re from last year and this spring. The sun bleached orange arrows so they look almost as white as freshly-painted white arrows. Freshness, by the way, is a clue. If you get lost and wind up on an obsolete course, it should be obvious that it’s not part of this September’s roads. The arrows will be faded and worn. That’s true for some on the new courses too, but the wrong roads have no freshly painted arrows. Some may look fairly fresh but clearly not as fresh as those painted this month. Some yellow arrows, especially between Trenton and Elkton, are orangeish. No local supplier had our bright yellow spray paint the day we painted them. We should’ve waited for some. We’re freshening some of those orangeish-yellow arrows and interspersing bright yellow ones among them, but color coding is a luxury anyway. Once a century rider passes the course split in Hermon Community—where the metric peels away—color shouldn’t matter to them. It would matter to a lost metric rider. If you’re trying to do the 61-miler, any color other than white’s not right. The few black arrows you may notice aren’t supposed to be recognizable. You can probably tell what they used to be, but it’s much more obvious what they are now: obliterated arrows, obsolete, invalid arrows that we painted over in May before we started using driveway sealer.

From here, back in time....we've saved the "best" of the Latest News:

Gratuitous History

The ride has been called the Labor Day Classic, the Labor Day Century, the Clarksville Labor Day Century, the Clarksville Century, The Silver Bullet Century, and the Free ’n’ Easy Bicycle Rally. Old-timers and bike-ride historians know it wasn’t always held on Labor Day weekend. Back in the eighties, it ran on the first weekend in June.

Updated August 25, 2007

Measurements, Course Changes, and Climbing Reduction

No one certifies bicycle courses. There are no standard distances in bicycle racing corresponding to the marathon, the 10K and the 5K. USA Track & Field certifies running and triathlon courses, however, so after we laid out the century course using Topo USA (far more accurate than GPS receivers or bike computers), we re-measured ours. We checked it several times with our handy Jones-Oerth-Lacroix counter, following the USAT&F measurement manual.

Due to the heat and advancing age, our measurement maven hasn’t been strong enough until recently to ride 100 miles. When he finally put the J-O-L to the century course the first time, we started scrambling to make repairs. To no one’s surprise, it was short, though not by much. The only way to make it come out at 100.00 miles and move the finish line onto Rossview campus was by returning the same way we go out. Now you’ll ride back in on Alfred Thun Road instead of International Boulevard. This proved to be a serendipitous alteration. It yielded an even faster century course due to a further reduction in cumulative climbing. We’ve advertised a 9% reduction, but now we’ve achieved a total reduction of 10%, compared with the course that produced the fastest-ever time for an organized century.

Length of the 2007 Metric

Our nominal metric falls short of 100K. Preliminary measurement were off, and by the time the Jones-Oerth-Lacroix counter turned up the shortfall, we didn’t have time to puzzle out a course exactly 62.137 miles long. As the cue sheet shows, ours measures 60.98 miles. We know of no metric century that is exactly 100K long. Indeed, most are short—by up to three miles. Still, everybody refers to these rides as metrics. Who are we to break the mold?

Updated September 10, 2006 - 2nd Summary Report

Last year's ride garnered accolades, but we're not sure a single person said it was the best bicycle ride he'd ever ridden. This year, we did hear exactly that - again and again - during and after the ride, and we heard it from a great many people. And we didn't fish for it. They took the trouble - on their own volition and initiative - to come to us to tell us. And they said it with patent sincerity and enthusiasm.

Wow. Thank you. Thank you very much.

The coolest ride day in our 20-plus years must have helped - but that's not what the riders told us. What they liked was easy parking, quick and easy registration, easy (almost foolproof) navigation, easy courses, and seven top-notch rest stops.

It may have also been our windiest ride day, and the record didn't fall. Thirteen riders, 12 men and one woman, finished in 3:56:11 (compared to last year's 3:53:00 ). But we think a second consecutive sub-four finish proves, vindicates, and distinguishes the new course and establishes it as one of the must-ride bicycle routes. A closed railroad crossing forced us to modify it ever so slightly from last year's version, and the opening of a new road will allow us to modify it slightly again for 2007. Next year's modification, like this year's, will whittle down the cumulative climbing and improve safety. Watch for new maps and cue sheets here on the website.

A surprising number of people who paid to ride last year failed to show up. Some notified us that the effects of Katrina (which struck just days before the ride), especially the scarcity of gasoline, kept them home. We were even more surprised that it happened again this year. The final numbers aren't in, but many more than 962, the number who actually rode, paid to ride. The beneficiaries of Rotary charities appreciate their donations, but we're sorry they didn't get to ride with us.

Despite course markings and signs widely acclaimed as "the best I've ever seen," a small number of people strayed off course, but only one person got hurt. He clipped the wheel of a buddy in front of him, fell, and got banged up. But he didn't break anything or require transport. We had notably more injuries and more serious injuries when we started en masse. We think that vindicates separate starts. A second record turnout seems to show most are either happy with the schedule or resigned to it. But seven people who started early with the 100-mile riders short-cutted in. Three of them made eloquent objections to waiting until 8:30 a.m. to start the 60-mile ride. We promised to rethink the policy and consult the bicycling community about it. We'll do that and keep you posted.

Despite overwhelming praise for the way we marked the courses, a few people wondered aloud whether we overdid the warning arrows. A warning arrow, of course, is the first one you see before an upcoming turn. Did we paint some too far ahead? The farther you pedaled around the course, the farther out we placed them. We hoped that scheme would explain itself. By the time they got to arrows placed unusually far ahead of upcoming turns, we thought, our riders would catch on. And we doubt anyone slowed before he actually saw a turn! Still, we should've spelled out the rules here on the website and should've explained them before each start. Better late than never, we'll go over those rules this week or next.

Updated September 6, 2006 - Preliminary Final Report

The lead peloton from 2005 managed to hold onto its record pace of 3:53:00, but just barely. The 2006 lead group turned in a 3:56:11. The final riders back to Rossview High School were pushing 10 hours. That's a long day in the saddle.

962 riders participated across all routes.

We're aware of one accident.

The biggest issue were the thorns hidden in the grass near the Trenton, KY rest stop. LOTS of flat tires.

One of the more interest complaints was that some of the turn marks occurred too early. (!!) OK, we stand convicted.

A good time seemed to be had by all. And the weather was great.

More info to follow.

Updated September 12, 2005

As Paul Harvey says, "Stand by for news." Look for numerous updates to follow this one as the Rotary Club gathers information and makes decisions about the 2006 ride - what course lengths to offer, a possible change of date, a different design and color for the course-marking arrows, a different schedule of starts, possible additional rest stops, and a lot more.
 

Let's again honor the riders who delivered a 3:53:00 century. You can see them all by clicking HERE.
 

Those of us who were involved with this event beginning in the mid-80s are convinced that this year's ride was the best yet by far. We've never heard such glowing comments. We appreciate the accolades we're finding on the Internet, and we're getting them from the survey too. As always, we need to make some adjustments and implement ideas we didn't have an opportunity to include this time, but in our opinion, the Clarksville "Sunshine" Rotary Club has established itself as a premier ride organizer.
 

Nine hundred fifty people rode this year. We had a justifiable basis for forecasting 1300 riders, but we were delighted to end up with 200 more riders this year than last year. Our ride and the CRAM used to draw about 2.6 times as many total riders as preregistered riders. That ratio failed to hold this time, maybe because of the ease of active.com registration. We also have reason to believe Katrina and the scarcity and price of gasoline hurt us. While only 20 preregistered riders failed to show in 2004, 100 failed to show this year, and 30 of the no-shows called and confirmed that gasoline and the storm kept them home.
 

The return of the metric century in 2006 is virtually a shoe-in. The half-century was the idea of the authors of this web, not the Rotary Club. We were wrong to press it on them. Judging from the terrific turnout, it must not have cost many entries, if any. Nevertheless, many of you who accepted the challenge to ride the full 100 miles or settled for 48 or 49 ** miles told us you nevertheless want a metric next year. Most of the clamor for its reinstatement is coming from riders quite capable of riding 100 miles. "Forty-eight miles is nothing," one of them said, "and I'd rather not do 100." Another called 48 miles "a tease." Maybe these remarks represent that "Goldilocks Effect" we mentioned here August 28. Maybe for many riders, 62 miles is simply “just right.”
 

An extra advantage of bringing back the metric is that we could start it at 8:30 a.m., a half-hour earlier than we started the 48. That would allow the 21 to start a half-hour earlier too, at eight o'clock. Unless we hear a lot of opposition, we'll probably drop the 48 in favor of the metric. It wouldn't be a lot of trouble to serve the 48-mile route along with the reinstated metric, but staging both rides on the same morning would produce one of two unacceptable conflicts:
 

First, if we started the 48-mile riders at the same time as the metric riders, it would put the 48-milers ahead of the fastest century riders. As we've said before, that's a hazard and it's not fair. This year’s elite peloton and other fast riders behind them had to pass a very few stragglers riding the 21-mile course. These very slow riders were riding solo and were easy enough to get around. Other riders managed to get ahead of the fastest riders, however, and they presented both a hazard and a nuisance, because several of them were riding side-by-side in clusters. These riders were traveling suspiciously fast. They weren’t 21-milers. We believe they started before nine o'clock but took a course that shortcutted the fast century riders. They exemplified the very lack of consideration we scheduled the separate starts to avoid, inasmuch as they resisted when motorcycle escorts asked them to form a single line to the right and allow overtaking riders to pass them safely.
 

Second, if we delayed the 48-mile riders until nine o'clock again, they'd meet beginners and youngsters coming in from the 21-mile ride. We have to limit ourselves to either the metric or the 48 and not both.

Some of you may not be stirred by the 3:53 finish, but let us remind you that it may well affect you. Most of us get a kick out of riding with large numbers of other cyclists. Three hours and 53 minutes is a specific and concrete indicator. It's a record that imparts bragging rights about how easy it is to ride our century course (and mile for mile, the two shorter courses are actually even easier). It's a record that will almost surely boost attendance.

** And how did we come up with those three distances? We came up with the length of the shortcut using Topo USA. If that sounds dumb, we've found that software more accurate than any of the three bicycle computers we used to measure the 100-mile course.

A number of people have reported that their bike computers showed the "48" to be closer to 49 miles long. The truth is, we never actually measured the "48" alone from start to finish. We measured the shortcut on Kentucky 848 from its intersection with Old Railroad Lane to its intersection with Highland Road. Then we added that distance to the distance on the 100-mile course from the start to the Kentucky 848-Old Railroad Lane intersection and then finally, added the distance from the Kentucky 848-Highland Road intersection to the finish. The sum was 48.26 miles.

You can input the circumference of your wheel in millimeters with an SRM power meter ($2500-$2700), but ordinary bike computers allow adjustments only in whole numbers of centimeters. Unless by some freak coincidence, your tire happens to be a perfect size, your miles are almost surely going to measure either long or short by up to a half percent. We used a recumbent with a small front wheel, which required more revolutions per mile. That made for finer-grained measurements compared to measurements measured with a 700c wheel. We used three different computers, and predictably, they all produced the same results, since all they do is count revolutions and make calculations from the counts.

A Jones-Oerth-Lacroix counter would yield still finer-grained measurements, since (I think) they make three mechanical "strikes" per revolution instead of magnetically triggering a computer once per revolution. We may remeasure the course with one of these gadgets next year, but we'll have to calibrate it extremely carefully to equal the accuracy of the methods we employed this year.

Before we talk about measuring the 100-mile course with GPS receivers and Topo USA, we should mention this: Since it wasn't possible to calibrate our bicycle computers to a high standard of accuracy, we derived correction factors by riding lengthy sections of roads marked with mile markers.

One summer during college, I worked on a highway survey crew and used steel tape to establish such markers. That left me with the impression that highway mile markers are always placed that carefully, although probably with laser rangers nowadays.

But over the past year, we've discovered that many mile markers aren't really exact miles apart. The distance between them can vary by several percent. At least, we got variations that large when we checked bicycle computers and GPS receivers against them. We did find two stretches of road, however, that produced equal distances between mile markers, according to both GPS and bike computers.

Before we discuss how GPS mileage, corrected bike computer mileage, and Topo USA mileage stacked up against each other, let us mention a characteristic of GPS measurements that could have a bearing on the measurement of the so-called 48-mile course. The longer the distance you measure with GPS receivers, the more accurate your results will be. GPS receivers are a poor choice for measuring segments between the intersections on cue sheets, yet they produce highly accurate results over distances as long as 50 miles.

We got perfect agreement between one of the GPS units and the length of a 40-mile stretch of Interstate as indicated by mile markers. Unfortunately, according to our best estimate, it's only 32.45 miles from the starting line to the Kentucky 848-Old Railroad Lane intersection and 13.82 miles from the Kentucky 848-Highland Road intersection to the finish line. The 32.45-mile section ought to be long enough to measure reliably by GPS, but GPS measurements of the 13.82-mile distance may not be as trustworthy. While we believe the measurement of even the shorter of these two distances is reasonably reliable, we have a great deal more faith in the GPS measurement of the full 100 miles.

What really surprised us was that we got extremely close agreement between measurements taken with GPS receivers and those shown on Topo USA maps. (By the way, Topo USA also shows elevations that correspond with both GPS measurements and actual surveyors' benchmarks. You have to let a GPS unit lie on the surface of the road for up to 15 minutes at a spot without overhanging trees or nearby high structures. You'll see the elevation change continually until the unit’s receivers acquire enough satellites to settle on a stable calculation.)

We think the correction factor we derived by comparing bicycle computer mileage with mile marker mileage corrects for the swerve required to balance a bicycle. Such corrected measurements, though they varied from trial to trial, agreed more closely, of course, with GPS mileage and Topo USA mileage than uncorrected computer mileage did.

We mentioned in the August 28 update that we've measured the hundred-mile course 17 times. That's actually an undercount, because it doesn't count the many times we measured portions of the course. If all this strikes you as unnecessary, consider that we kept getting disparities between trials and worse disparities between methods. And consider that we felt obliged to make the 100-mile course as exact as possible. Saturday's 3:53:00 finishing time means something, because we're confident that the course is truly 100 miles long - or at least, as close as any skeptic is likely to be able to measure it.

We're sure it's occurred to you that all this measuring produced varying results. As we learned about the reliability of the three methods (not to mention a fourth method we used during early exploration, automobile odometer mileage corrected by comparison with highway mile-marker mileage), we learned to trust certain results more than others. We ended up locating the starting line and the finish line according to a weighted average, with GPS and Topo USA measurements receiving more weight than bicycle computer measurements. To estimate the lengths of the segments between choice points for the cue sheets, however, we gave more weight to bicycle computer readings.

We should mention that one stretch of the course couldn't be measured using Topo USA. The Topo USA map doesn't show the new four-lane section of US 68. That means we couldn't use the software to find the length of Old US 68, much less New US 68 (the four-lane section itself), or Business US 68 leading into Elkton. We used AutoCAD, the software we used to draw our maps, to overlay the Topo USA maps with aerial photographs showing the four-lane as it looked when it was being constructed. That technique gave us almost exactly the same results we got from GPS receivers.

If you want to replicate our efforts, you should be as painstaking as we were when drawing routes onto Topo USA maps. View the roads (represented by linked straight lines without curves) at a very small scale and be sure to stay within the lines. We discovered that straying outside the lines reduces accuracy.

Updated September 5, 2005

Whew!! Another year done. A more complete report will be posted soon.

A new century course record was set: 3:53:00. Read more HERE.

A record number of riders participated. While we're waiting for the official count, early numbers were in the range of 950. Higher gas prices and lack in gas in some areas (due to the shutdown of refineries in the New Orleans area) kept a number of riders at home.

We learned more about how to put on a really good biking event and we discovered some things that we did wrong, that we'll fix next year. More about this later as well. So check back when you have a chance. We're headed to bed....

Updated August 31, 2005

ELITE PELOTON: The ride staff heard from an out-of-town bicycle club Tuesday. Their fast riders are planning an assault on the “Sunshine” Century record. They’re bringing their own support. The ride organizers are providing lead peloton support too. Individual riders and riders from other clubs are returning, including folks who rode in last year’s lead peloton, the one that finished in 4:01 on a slower course. And we expect fast riders who haven’t ridden here before, also pursuing sub-four finishes. THE FOLLOWING COMMENTS APPLY TO ELITE PELOTON RIDERS ONLY:

   1. Those who believe they can maintain a 25+ mph average for 100 miles should be at the front of the pack no later than 6:45 A.M. Announcements will be made at that time and "rules of engagement" covered. The lead peloton will leave in front of all other riders, led by motos and followed by support vehicles.

   2. The ride organizers will provide support by calling turns as "clear" or "not clear" and blocking on-coming traffic whenever possible, but all riders must be responsible for their own safety and watchful of those around them. If we tell the peloton to "stop" at a turn, we expect all riders to come to a complete stop. We want elite riders to have fun and if they can set a course record in the process, great. If we believe safety rules are being ignored, we will suspend peloton support. Keep in mind that this is not a race. In the sole opinion of the ride organizers, if a rider is identified as riding in an unsafe manner (e.g. swerving, not capable of holding a line, insisting on using time trial bars in close quarters, or harassing other riders) he or she will be asked to leave the peloton. If he or she refuses, support will be withdrawn for all riders (...from a distance, we will then watch the offending rider be severely reprimanded by all other riders).

   3. If a rider flats, the ride organizer's support vehicles will not render aid (regular SAG vehicles will provide this service as they will for all riders with problems on the road). If a rider is dropped by the peloton, support vehicles will not pull the rider back to the peloton. If several riders break away, and in the sole opinion of the ride organizers those riders are capable of staying away, the ride organizer support vehicles will move forward to support those riders. In other words, we are there to support whoever is in front. If a riders gets dropped, we recommend the rider slow down and enjoy the balance of the day.

   4. The 100-mile course crosses railroad tracks on four occasions. In the unlikely event that a train blocks the peloton, all riders will wait until the way is clear, even if this means that the 4:01 course record cannot be beaten. If a lead group accompanied by support vehicles can safely cross tracks in advance of the arrival of a train, then that group can proceed and not wait for any other riders. If a couple of dare-devils race ahead of support vehicles to beat a train to a crossing and do so successfully, their time will not be counted as the official finish time if they are able to stay away from all other riders. (e.g. We don't want anyone doing anything stupid.) If they lose the race to the train, we'll mourn the loss of a couple of really dumb people.

   5. The support vehicles will carry a limited amount of water and some basic food. We will not have a restaurant on wheels. All riders must bring appropriate amounts of water and food for a 100 mile event.

   6. The riders must agree among themselves when and where they wish to declare feed zones or bathroom breaks.

   7. Any water bottle/article of clothing thrown into a support vehicle will be returned to the registration desk. We will not come looking for you. If stuff gets lost, or if someone likes your water bottle better than their own, the ride organizers are not responsible.

   8. The "official" finish time will be decided solely by the ride organizers.

   9. Finally, all statements contained in the rider's waiver of liability apply. If you participate in the lead group, you understand that you do so at your own risk while participating in a sport that can result in injury to yourself or to others if you are not careful at all times (and sometimes even when you are being careful). Traffic laws must be obeyed.

FORECASTS: The “Sunrise” Rotary Club already received over 500 preregistrations. At last September’s century and also at the CRAM (Clarksville Rotary Annual Metric) this spring, 2.6 times more people showed up to ride than preregistered. On that basis, we could project 1300 total entries. WOW!! The website's counter has garnered over 40,000 hits. The weather forecast is for a string of sunny days through the weekend with temperatures in the mid-eighties. Look for a sizeable turnout and we hope to see you there.

Updated September 4, 2004

The 2004 edition of the Labor Day Classic is now history. The leaders will meet to discuss what went right and what went wrong in order to make the 2005 edition better.

For now this will do: There were roughly 700 riders. The lead group (of roughly 30 riders) completed the century route in 4:01:13, a new course record. It rained on some riders while others never felt a drop. A bunch of kids painted out some of our blaze marks during the middle of the day, but we got riders rounded up and back on the right route. We had one volunteer, who went temporarily insane one would assume, and sent some of the 35 mile riders back down the same loop that they had just completed. (That was fun to straighten out.) No one got hurt (we don't think). We had a ton of PBJs left over. The weather was extraordinarily cool for early September. The spaghetti meal was a big hit. Virtually everyone seemed to have a good time. Now the webmaster is going to bed. It's been a long day.