Today I want to share my weekends experience on my first cycling event. We signed up for the Honor Ride in Thousand Oaks, well Agoura/Westlake. The Honor Rides Series raises awareness and is the funding arm for Ride 2 Recovery and gives the public the opportunity to ride with healing heroes and enlisted military on a non-competitive, fun ride. Close to 20 Honor Rides will take place throughout the year, with varying distances from 10 to 100 miles. All funds raised through the Honor Ride Series support Project Hero programs throughout the US. As the longest ride I’d been on was 15 miles and Bob 12 miles we kept small with the 17 miler, though there were 2 much longer rides available to ride. We walked the dogs that morning and loaded the bikes up and headed out to the Sheriff’s office in Agoura for the 8am start. There were so many bikes and riders on that Saturday morning.
Everyone was friendly and there were lots of different types of bike. Whilst road bikes were the majority there were a couple of people on mountain bikes so just go for it, don’t be discouraged! We were there in our matching helmets 😉
The 17 mile ride was beautiful, all around Westlake, Thousand Oaks and Agoura area. As I hadn’t been on a ride before it took a moment to understand the floor markings (knowing that a left arrow before the intersection meant get OUT of the “right turn only” lane) but we did great. My goal for the race was just to have fun, and enjoy the ride. I didn’t push or go fast, which was a good thing as my cadence meter wasn’t working so I had no idea what RPM I was doing at all the whole race. There were rolling hills, some nice downhills and a couple of evil climbs towards the end, all in all though a good route with bike lanes the whole way!
Garmin data showed I finished in 1:10 burning 820 calories!!! Max speed was 28 mph and average pace of 4:07. Not bad for just plodding along. I think I get caught up sometimes in striving to do well that I miss out on the experience of the actual run/ride. So I was determined to just enjoy and have fun. As it turned out I was the first one back for the 17 miler!
Yep I got first place 😉 Obviously the experienced riders were all out on the longer runs! Nevertheless I got my finisher medal, another one for the collection, and then waited for Bob!
Bob came in a few minutes later, and got 1st male and 2nd overall! After snagging his medal we took some photos!
The ride was enjoyable but we chose not to hang around for ‘lunch’ as we knew there would be nothing for us veggie people to eat. Plus that was the whole point of doing the short distance: so that it wouldn’t take the whole morning. We decided to get our photos and medals, and then head out home. We thoroughly enjoyed the event and both of us said we’d do it again in a heartbeat. When I said we could do the longer/middle distance Bob kinda wrinkled his nose, but I think we both had more miles in us for sure, we’d just have to train for it.
All in all a very enjoyable event!
Have you done a cycling event?