CWC

Traveled to Maryland and DC this past weekend to meet my family in DC since my niece was participating in the nations triathlon. 6,000 athletes were scheduled to compete but "only" a few over 5,000 showed up. The swim portion was cancelled because of the heavy rain the area received the week prior to the race. After I dropped my wife off at the hotel and drove over the Potomac river and saw how high, fast and dirty it was running I thought they would be cancelling the swim. I headed back to Frederik to meet the guys and go get our "packets" for the Civil War Century on Saturday. By ride packet I mean a bag with your number or wrist band a map and a few other goodies you get used to getting when you do a century. Well the "packet" turned out to be a wrist band and choose your map from the table. Can't complain much, the rest stations were full of all kind of fooods and they had a good spread at the end. It rained hard on Friday and we thought here we go again, another rainy century. But it turned out to be a great day with temps most of the day in the high 70's to low 80's. The next day we parked at a farm field where I thought they were going to need a tow truck to pul cars out after the ride but the ground was hard and the cars stayed "above ground".
The ride started with 30 minutes of climbing right up the mountains. The pace was mellow since we wanted to enjoy the ride. Any other time it would have been a 25 minute climb. Great views, beautiful farms and homes the rest of the day. Mid-way through the ride we hit what the locals called the "grinder", a 7 mile climb that started on a wide country highway with a wider that average berm at 3-4%, then at 3 miles in it turned left into a narrow road that quickly went to 5-8% the rest of the way with a few pitches at 10%. I felt good and let it all hang out there and went hard. I waited at the bottom for Joe and we rode together the rest of the way enjoying the ride. In all we ened up with close to 8,000 feet of climbing for the day and 105 miles.
After the ride it was back to DC. Sunday the city had many streets closed because the tri, a running race and 911 celebrations and we couldn't make it to the race. We headed home and of course we had to stop at the Premium Outlets for my wife to check out the "purse" store.