# Flat and not so empty - Eastern Shore Ride Report - Seagull Century (looong)



## JohnnyTooBad (Apr 5, 2004)

Sorry, no pics. If you want to see some pics of this ride, look at Lens great pics, and Photoshop 5000 of your closest friends into them.

I'll start in the beginning.

Had dinner with the family at home Friday night. Loaded up on carbs (pizza :thumbsup: ) then left the house in Ashburn, VA at 6:30. Arrived in Salisbury at 9:30. Oh, by the way, DC beltway traffic is the suxxor on a Friday afternoon (do I hear a great big "DUUHH!!":idea: from the peanut gallery?)

Got up at OHMYGODIT'SEARLY! this morning, and got everyone together (we had about 8 in our group), loaded up the cars and headed over to Salisbury State U. Sucked down a monster breakfast consisting of two very large pancakes, about 2 eggs, a bunch of sausage, an equal amount of bacon, two glasses of OJ and two glasses of Coke. All in our group, except one, were doing the full century, so most of them wanted to be on the road at 7am when they opened the start, because they ride fairly slow. I took my time and went back to my truck to get my bike, the headed to the start. I found one of our group at the start, so we pedaled off at about 7:30.

The weather was couldy and 100% humidity, with some light fog, and nice, cools temps. About a third of the way through, it started clearing up and turned into a fabulous day (although I had no problem with the early morning weather).

Not 1/4 mile into the ride, the two of us were spinning along at about 16-18mph, to get warmed up, when we realized that a few other folks that were hanging around near us at the start, were all starting to form a pace line. Some folks in front of us fell in at about the same speed, but after about 4 miles, picked it up to about 22-24mph.

Then, I looked around, and we had a group of about 6-8, and were smoothly buzzing along at a nice pace. About 3 of the guys were all doing pretty long pulls (over 2miles each), but not dropping back past the first 3 people. So I worked my way up to 3rd in line, and when the next guy moved over, I told him we had a pretty good line going, and he is welcome to let some of the rest of us do some work up front. Since he had just done a couple of pulls in fairly quick succession, he was happy to hear that.

Along the way toward the first rest stop, which is at about mile 20(?), we picked up a few and lost a few. As we came to the first rest stop, wich is a mile+ down a side road, I was pulling, and just totally ignored it. A couple of guys went off to the rest stop, but we still had over a half dozen folks. Posibly closer to 10.

I know a lot of people have said how dangerous the Seagull Century is, and there certainly are some people who need to get a clue, but if you leave early, you get through the slow, clueless traffic pretty quickly. We did have a number of occasions where there would be two or three people riding abreast, with the right-most person in the center of the lane, and the left-most person riding the yellow line  Our lead rider would yell 3-5 times that we were passing on the left, but those folks were totally oblivious. That said, there were no close calls all day :thumbsup: 

There was going to be a rest stop at mile 40, and at mile 30, when I finished my pull, another one of the riders asked if there were any plans for the rest stop at mi 40. I said that I'd like to skip it and go all the way to Assateague Island (the "mid point" rest stop at mile 62). When we got to the rest stop at mile 40, we had about a dozen riders with us, and I was about 3rd in line. It's a 90 degree right turn onto another road, with the rest stop at the intersection. Folks started slowing down, but I sort of encourage folks to keep going. A few stopped, and about 8 continued on. Since I was the guy doing the "encouraging", I somehow managed to end up up front for an unplanned pull. Go figure.

After that rest stop, the roads were nicley uncrowded, as we had worked our way past most of the slow traffic. The folks we were coming up on now, were moving along at a good pace. This has the effect of making the pace line a fair bit larger :shocked: 

As we kept cruising along, it became quite obvious that we really had a couple of hammers in our pace line. A couple of the guys were routinely pulling for 3 miles at a time, at 24mph+... niiiice! :thumbsup: 

But this has another effect... At one point, after one of hammers did a hard pull, the guy behind me informed us that we were down to 4 people... Crap!... I was sort of skeptical as to whether I culd do that much pulling. But about 3-5 miles further down the road, we came upon a fast moving pace line of over 15 people. We slowly passed, and they decided to join in the fun. Apparently, at one point someone counted 22 in our line.

I was quite relieved, but as some of the new guys started getting their turns up front, I noticed the pace had dropped down to under 20mph on the flats, and a line that big of people who don't regularly ride in pacelines (I'm one of those, but was paying a lot of attention on trying to be consistent), the group became a giant accordian, with people splaying out to the sides as the accordian compressed. After being back there for about 5 minutes, I started to get really annoyed, so I went up and put myself at about 5th wheel, behind some of the guys I had been riding with the whole time.

When the hammers would get to the front, they'd accellerate, which was mildly annoying (shouldn't you just keep the same pace, or if you are going to accellerate, do it slowly?), but had a good effect of dropping some of the slower folks. I'd keep my pulls at about 23mph, but would only pull for 1.5mi, so that I wouldn't burn out. By the time we got to Assateague Island, we were back down to about 9 folks. We all stopped at the rest stop, but everyone agreed to make it really quick. Just down some food, grab some more and fill up the bottles. A couple guys had to use the head, so we waited for them, then got on our way. My computer didn't even have time to shut the display off. I'm guessing it was a 5 minute stop. But even that was enough to make my legs unhappy. I did the first pull out of the rest stop, which takes you up the big bridge. Going up the bridge, I got to the top doing about 16mph, and even coming down the other side, could barely pull at 20-21mph, so I kept it to 1 mile, and just told the buy behind me that I needed to spin for a few minutes to get back in the groove (I felt rather wimpy:blush2: ).

We spun along in pretty good harmony for a long time. At one point, I felt the onset of cramps in my legs, so I shoved a banana down my throat and cleared it with a half a bottle of Gatorade. It took about 5-10 minutes, but worked like a charm.

The last rest stop was at mile 80, and there was no way I was going to stop. Two guys dropped into the rest stop, so now we were down to 7. Then, with about 15 miles to go, One guy cramped up, and he and his buddy dropped off, leaving us with just 5. A have to admit that I was worried about my chances of hanging on with only 5 of us. The next time I got up front, I put my forearms on the bars and held th cables with my fingers to get into a TT position. My bad! And if any of the guys I rode with are reading this, I apologize, because I scared the crap out of them and me when I went to come up from that position, and my bike got the wobbles....BAD! I had serious visions of high-siding, and I could hear the gasps behind me. Luckily, I pulled it out, and continued to pull until we got to the next stop sign. Disaster avoided.

So, the group of us pulled back into the university, with a ride time of 4:26 at 22.0mph, and a total elapsed time of 4:30!!:thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup: What a blast! No one had any mechanicals, and it was congrats all around for a smokin fun time. At the Seagull, that's what you pay your money for: To go out and test yourself. I honestly never would have believed I had it in me to run a full century at 22mph, even in a paceline. One caveat, though, it turns out we only did 97miles because we skipped that first rest stop that was over a mile up an access road.

I did end up with one small casualty. At one point, we all hit a nasty pothole that was unseen due to the shadows from the trees. It turns out I broke the bottle cage on my down tube at the mount, just below the top screw. No biggie, it's just aluminum, but it was hard to find the green cages that match my frame.

So after about 3 and a half hours of chilling out in the beer garden and another 3 and a half hours in the car, I'm back at the old abode, and just giddy with how the day went. I know I'm not the fastest guy out there, but I surprised myself with how well I did.

I hope all you other folks that did the Seagull had an equally good time.


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## MarkS (Feb 3, 2004)

Thanks for the report. I was supposed to do the Seagull last year, but bailed out because of the bad weather. My riding buddies and I did not sign up for it this year because of last year's bad luck (and bad weather in other years, too). I had to go to Annapolis on Friday afternoon. As I was heading back toward Baltimore, the traffic headed in the other direction toward the Bay Bridge was at a standstill. I noticed that a lot of the cars had road bikes on a rack. I was thinking about all of you headed to the Eastern Shore for the Seagull. 

I would like to do the Seagull one year just so that I could get my under five hour century. I know that I never will get anywhere near five hours on the centuries that I regularly do, such as the Civil War Century and the Mountains of Misery. It sounds like you had a great day. Your report already has me thinking about next year.


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## wooglin (Feb 22, 2002)

Good verbiage. I've done Seagull twice, and both times it was a lot of fun. I got good weather one year and rainy weather the second. Either way, its a beautiful place to ride a bike.


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