Early last week, I decided to go ahead and hop into the Crystal Ride, a casual cycling ride that’s part of the weekend’s Air Force Cycling Classic, an annual event held locally that contains a handful of professional and amateur races as well as this, a touring ride through Crystal City and the Pentagon area.

I didn’t do any real prep as my regular riding should have me in good enough shape to get through the event, but I had never ridden all that far and all that fast so I wasn’t sure what kind of effort attain “the gold” would be. Medals are awarded based on the number of 7.6 mile laps you complete. In order to get a gold one, I had to average 17.7 miles per hour for 62 miles.

My regular daily rides are at or above that pace, but my regular rides are not 62 miles. In fact, I rarely break 30. My longest ride ever before this event was 61 with a long lunch break included. Longest single effort? 42, and both of those efforts were just a touch below the magical 17.7.

That’s where the pace line comes into play. While I’m pretty certain I could have done the 17.7 average on my own, it turned out to be pretty easy with the help of a handful of friends and acquaintances from both my running life and the shop I ride with on occasion, The Bike Lane. Not only that, but with their help (I’m pretty inexperienced leading a line so I only did so for a short bit) I managed much above that special number.

62.84 miles, 19.85mph, 3:09:40. While I think a sub-3 is possible, my goal for next year will be an easy one… 20mph average. Likely would have had it this year had I not run out of gas with two laps to go and lost my group.

The event itself was pretty well put together, but there were a few items I’d like to see improved:

• There were a handful of corners on the course that were really poorly planned out. I’m sure the organizers did their best with what they had, but still, some bad spots.
• Water suppliers didn’t know how to hold/hand out bottles to cyclists. You need a really limp arm because we’re moving at a pretty good clip. Far too many dropped bottles.
• There were a number of REALLY, REALLY bad road “features” that were unmarked and/or could have been filled in a matter of minutes. Think: Potholes in the center of the street that could eat a bike, parallel grates that are perfectly sized to swallow a tire, curbs with improper “coneage” to push us away from them.
• Corral system? Lots of slow riders in the way, but it’s a casual ride and inevitable given the fact that we’re doing laps. Probably nothing that can be done here.

Overall, a fun time and sure to be one when your assigned number is 1337. I will likely participate again next year. It’s not often that you get a well-organized cycling event so close to home.

I also attended the pro and amateur races in Clarendon the day before and snapped a few pics. Click here to see the highlights and/or pics of friends. Yeah, I know people 😉