2009 Tour de Cure

Well, after missing the 2008 Tour de Cure ride for the American Diabetes Association (due to being in the middle of moving from New York to Georgia), I was finally able to ride in the Atlanta/Northern Georgia TdC this year. As usual, I did the 100 mile route.

The short version is: Another well organized ride, though this time, it rained pretty much continuously from about the 40 mile mark. It was still warm enough that, as long as you kept moving, you were warm, but at a couple of the rest stops I got cold pretty quick! The ADA does a good job of organizing these rides, and they know what they are doing. They seem to do a good job of getting great volunteers too, and training them, since they always seem to know what they are doing. Thank you again to the ADA for a great ride!

Of course, since I've been doing the TdC in Rochester since 1993 (I have the century patch to prove it!), the natural thing is to compare the two rides. So, here is how this ride fared.

Route:
This is the first year I've done the TdC here, so I had NO idea what to expect. What I got was a very hilly route, though no real "killer" hills. Well, almost... This wasn't a mountain climb by any stretch of the imagination, but they had lots of long climbs, some of which got pretty painful at the end. I'm glad I did a lot of climbing practice over the past few months, since I was generally able to pass people up on the climbs. There wasn't very much flat terrain! In general, you were either going up or down. The traffic was pretty manageable on most of the roads, though there were some pretty narrow spots. Towards the beginning, when we were still in some big groups, they had police or volunteers manning intersections to stop traffic when we were going across. The markings were good on the roads, though I would still have liked to see an actual MAP of the course.

Compared to Rochester, the route was good, though a lot hillier. It was pretty confusing with the twists and turns, and seemed to endlessly loop around. They did double up quite a bit with the shorter (100K and 40mile), which can be good and bad.

Roads:
Something I've noticed about Georgia roads is that they tend to be reasonably good surface (no potholes!), but the shoulders are abysmal, or with the several inch drop-off into soft dirt, downright dangerous! You usually get 3 to 6 inches from the white line, and that's it!

On this route, the roads were fair to good, with some spots where it got pretty rough. I'd say I liked the Rochester and Finger Lakes roads better, though they had plenty of lousy sections too. Of course, with the rain, that made everything a little messy (mud and junk on the road), but not too bad. Overall, I think they did a good job of selecting good roads.

Organization:
Excellent as usual. Some of the rest areas were running a little short on either food or sports drink, but I was always able to get enough. Check-in was very fast. I got there a little later than I wanted to, but got through check-in in a couple of minutes. They either had more people working, or fewer riders, since the Rochester tour always seemed to take a lot longer.

Now, if they could only do something about ordering better weather.... ;-)

Volunteers:
As I told some of the volunteers on the ride, one of the things which always makes the TdC a great ride is the caliber of volunteers that they get. I don't know what ADA does, but they must really pump these people up! And then, they train them, and make sure they have what they need. It's great to hear them cheering for you, and they are always friendly and courteous.

Fund-raising:
Since so many people know the ADA, this ride tends to almost do the money raising for you. I was a little disappointed though in how much I was able to raise this year, but there are many reasons for that. Partly, it's just the sucky economy, partly it's that we just moved and we don't have so many people we know here, partly it's just that I was busy and didn't have a lot of time to spend on it. In the end, I did have about $270, so that's a good start for a new tradition of riding here.

I am, however, very grateful to those who did support my ride. They are the ones who really make it worth while!

Riders:
I really miss my team, "Wheezers and Geezers", from up North! :-( I didn't actually do a lot of riding with them (most of them are a lot less wheezerly than I am), but still, it's great to have a bunch of people who are pulling for you, and especially at the end of the ride. There were plenty of friendly riders out on the course, and people tend to talk pretty easily, but if you started to fall off the back, they weren't about to wait for you. I rode with groups for about the first 50 miles or so, but then as my knees started to get sore, I dropped back. I was able to link up with a couple of other riders, which was a huge help, but I did a lot of miles on my own. It wasn't until the last 12 miles or so I linked up with one young lady rider (very strong though), and we managed to ride together to the finish of the course.

I think it had a lot to do with the cold rain at the finish, but not very many people stuck around for very long once they got back, so I didn't feel like there were people to talk to. I had my massage, ate something, talked to a few people, and then headed home to a long, warm shower!

Mechanical:
That old Miata pulled through again! The thing is as old as dirt (and almost as heavy), but I rode without a single mechanical problem. Oh there were a couple of times it felt like the tires had turned to mush, but I think that was just my legs screaming in protest.

I saw a lot of very nice bikes out there, and a lot of them at the side of the road with mechanical problems, or flats, or broken spokes or whatever. Riding in the rain is rough on a bike, and some of these $1,000 or $2,000 prima donnas don't do so well in these conditions. Of course, some of it is lack of maintenance, or lack of a lot of real riding on these things, but it's impossible for me to tell. Almost all rest stops had mechanics set up (great advertising!), so there were people to go to if you did have a problem. I don't remember seeing any sag wagons on the course though, so I don't know how many of them there were, or what you would do if something happened out on the road

Massage:
One of the great things about the TdC is that the ADA brings in professional massage schools. I don't know if they do it in every city, but in Rochester and here (Atlanta/North Georgia) they did. These people are great! I really think it helps with your recovery the next day. The only problem I had this time was the little tents they were using, and when it started to blow and rain again while I was laying there, I got so cold I started to shiver really badly. I don't think that helped my cramping caves either! :-( Still, it was a great way to end the ride.

Food:
Food at the end was OK. It was warm! Overall, they have better food in the Rochester ride, but I was just glad to have something warm in my tummy. Food along the was was comprible -- lots of fruit, but not much by way of bagels or straight carbs. They did have various granola bars and such. Basically, it covered what we needed to keep going.


Overall, it was another great ride. I'm going to be stiff and sore tomorrow, but it was definitely worth it. It's great to be riding again!

Exchange OWA and Firefox

Very Interesting....

If you use Firefox to display Exchange calendars through OWA, then it should come as no surprise that Microsoft makes your "user experience" as painful as possible. I've found that, when you are in the "daily" view, the Exchange server sends wrong data for the "all day" events for that day. It looks like Exchange is incorrectly figuring the dates, and bleeds the events from one date over to the next date. (For example, if my event is on the 19th, it will show up on both the 19th and the 20th.)

If you switch back to the Weekly view, then Exchange actually sends the correct data for Monday - Friday, but events on Saturday and Sunday just vanish.

(Also, Exchange renders "weeks" on Firefox as Sunday-Saturday. On IE, it renders "weeks" as Monday-Sunday.)

So, if you use Firefox to view calendars, then Exchange dumbs-down the interface and scrambles the data for you.

Gotta love it.

:-(