Crystal Ride

[PotomacCyclist]

I heard that there was an awards ceremony for the Crystal Ride, from 11:05 to 11:30 am next to the Air Force Memorial. I didn't go back up there for the ceremony so I don't know what kind of awards they gave out. I had been under the impression that they weren't keeping track of anything except for laps, but clearly that wasn't the case.

[txgoonie]

29mph? I suppose it's possible, but highly unlikely. Just b/c of conditions, route, other riders, etc.

Anybody else's results wrong? My first and second laps were nowhere near 58 and 57 minutes :-(

[eminva]

I started towards the back,

If you call that the back, where I started was in North Carolina.

Liz

[PotomacCyclist]

Here's the video I shot of the final sprint of the men's pro race. You can see the start of the accident, in the middle of the road. He must have hit the ground almost directly in front of me. When I saw him slide past, I thought that maybe I had reached over the fence and somehow caused the crash. But the video and the pictures show that another rider caused the crash. So I won't get banned from watching any future pro bike races!

[Megabeth]

Wait a minute! We were right next to you! I'm the stunned one wearing a pink shirt and white hat at the end of your video. You can see I move my hands off the rail because I thought, too, "Oh, s(*&t! Did I stick my head out too far?!?"

[Tim Kelley]

But yeah, I think I'll do some Strava uploading to see if I end up with the KOM for a lap!

Ha! I wasn't even going to bother, but yeah Strava has reported me with 6 KOMs from that ride. (4 of which being duplicate segments set up by multiple people.)

[DaveK]

Wait a minute! We were right next to you! I'm the stunned one wearing a pink shirt and white hat at the end of your video. You can see I move my hands off the rail because I thought, too, "Oh, s(*&t! Did I stick my head out too far?!?"

Ha!

Yeah we were standing one person away - that's Megabeth in the hat and I'm the one in the blue shirt looking concerned at about 18 seconds. Or clearing my throat. Anyway, small world... I'm really glad the microphone didn't catch me screaming like a girl.

[Mark Blacknell]

PotomacCyclist - are you the guy with the very un-aero beard?

[PotomacCyclist]

Nope, no beard. I don't think I could grow one like that guy even if I wanted to.

Because I was so concerned about turning the camera to keep the focus on the leaders, I don't think I would have noticed if Alexi Schmitt was heading right for me. His bike could have come flying up at my head and I wouldn't have even seen it. I barely noticed him sliding by until I saw him about 15 feet down the road.

[vvill]

29mph? I suppose it's possible, but highly unlikely. Just b/c of conditions, route, other riders, etc.

Anybody else's results wrong? My first and second laps were nowhere near 58 and 57 minutes :-(

Mine seemed pretty accurate. Where did you have your timing chip?

A quick scan of the results page shows that someone posted a time of 18:51 in the 7th lap. But I'm not sure that's correct. That would be an average of more than 29 mph for the lap. Since no one else managed to approach that time, he would have had to ride that fast without the help of drafting. Is that even possible for an amateur rider?

They probably just looped back around without doing the whole lap - I don't think the timing system's that smart. If they had mats in Rosslyn and the Air Force Memorial then they could get some pretty cool timing breakdowns. (But still, I'm impressed with the setup - this is the first time I've been in a timed cycling event.)

I'm always amazed at how much faster I can ride with other riders around (to motivate/draft off)... I started maybe midpack and didn't actually get to get going until after Rosslyn on my first lap. About 100 yards after that turn, someone's mostly full water bottle rolled towards me and other riders were calling "water bottle!". I slowed enough to let it roll in slowly onto my front wheel and picked it up but I guess not as slowly as I thought as the rider behind me fell off his bike. Oops. Then I looked around for a gap to throw it off the course but it was hard to find a good spot as I was on the far left.

I think it would be good if the event was NOT a mass start. They could simply have groups based on previous year's finish times (and newbies would just go into the back group).

Here's the video I shot

Ouch! I saw Mark's photos but the video looks more painful somehow (I guess because you can see the limping OUCH gait.)
"That is a lot of road rash..."