[thucydides]

You know it’s funny how things go. My crossing over Lynn/Lee this morning (~8:30 really late for me) was actually kind of bad because of the lack of cars. The light was with me and no cars were there to turn until right when I hit the intersection when a car suddenly decided to turn from the far left lane of Lee and then another car came tearing up the far right lane. It was a bit of a bad moment though both cars ended seeing me and slammed on their brakes. The low traffic meant that the cars that did turn were at a much higher rate of speed than normal. It really is a no win intersection.

[thucydides]

Me: Leisurely coming into work 2 hours late, cruising past the Kennedy Center.
You: Riding your bike on the I-66 on-ramp, headed for the TR.
Me: “Are you crazy or lost?!?”
You: Ignoring the frantically gesturing nut on the other side of fence.
Me: I hope you made it to wherever you were going in one piece.

[thucydides]

Somehow I missed all the stuff with the pictures. I’ll see if I can find mine. The traffic tieups were extraordinary, way beyond anything I’ve ever seen in a race before. I received a whole lot of death stares to the point where I stopped looking at the folks in cars after a while. The cops put up with a lot of people storming out their cars to yell and scream and I had at least one other participant mention to me that she got flipped off and cussed at. So…yeah I’m a little dubious that this race happens again. We’ll see.

On swimming one thing I did this year was to take a several-week clinic put on by Wave One. It’s geared towards open water though occurs in pools (the sessions were at Yorktown (Arlington) and the Lab School (Georgetown). It’s the first time I’ve ever had any swim coaching and I personally found it useful. They also do Thursday night swims out at National Harbor. BTW on the foggy goggles front. I use to suffer mightily from this and had a couple of real bad experiences due to simply not being able to see buoys. The owner of Wave One (Denis Crean) told me to put baby shampoo inside my goggles and let it set for a while (say the night before a race). Then rinse and wear. I’ve not had a single problem with fogging ever since.

[thucydides]

Wow, PotomacCyclist, I’m really sorry for your experience. I concur with KLizotte’s sentiments below.

This race is getting chewed over big time on slowtwitch due to the swim and a long line of other issues. That was definitely the most epic swim I’ve been involved in and I’m so grateful that no one was seriously injured because it was a dangerous situation. The course was more or less a triangle with red buoys marking the two turns. My experience was that the current pushed me out a bit to the left on the first leg so when I turned to go to the red buoy I ended up in an endless pool. Like you and lots of others I didn’t realize it for a while. “Gee that red buoy just isn’t getting any closer.” Then, of course, the waves started colliding as everyone was stuck. I was in the green-cap wave so my group collided with blue caps in front and then we eventually got hammered by the pink caps from behind. So we’re all stuck in an endless-pool washing-machine situation. I saw a few people on boats and heard a yell for help or two, but fortunately for me I managed to get through past the red buoy and into open water on the second leg. I’m sure I was in a situation where it took me at least 5 minutes to go 50 yards past that first red buoy. The second leg of course took forever as it was against the current and lots and lots of people cut the course during this second leg. Several times I thought that I had to be off course but it turns out I really wasn’t by much. I made it to the far red buoy and then turned for home. I normally do 1.2 in about 35 minutes (so I’m definitely not a top swimmer), but this took me 54 minutes. I think a combination of a year of very hard work in the pool and my own ignorance about what was really happening got me through it. Two years ago there’s no way in the world I make it past the first red buoy.

But…I think the initial run in the water plus the swim sapped a lot of my energy as I ended up having a pretty miserable day that included walking almost all the hills on the (really really hot) run. Oh well. It was definitely memorable that’s for sure. Half way through that sucker I was absolutely convinced that there was no way I was ever doing a half (let alone longer distance) ever again. But I’m already wavering.

[thucydides]

@kcb203 55955 wrote:

What I find more terrifying than the bridge are the people turning into the Kennedy Center across the sidewalk who don’t seem to look at all. And on the VA side, there’s always confusion at the intersection on the boardwalk because 95% of the traffic continues on the Mt. Vernon trail, but the trail to the TR Bridge appears to have the right of way.

This part right here has got me worried but for completely different reasons than for probably anyone on the planet. The way my kid logistics works has me biking about 3 days a week and driving 2. When biking home WB I bike along 25th (the street parallel to the Kennedy Center) and then turn left at the 66 on-ramp and then immediately right onto the trail. When I drive home I drive along 25th and then turn left and continue on to I-66. I’ve got this mortal fear that as I get older and spacier that one day I’ll either: 1) bike onto the I-66 on-ramp (i.e., not turn onto the trail but start heading onto 66); or 2) turn my car right onto the trail. Both would be bad though hopefully not dangerous to anyone as long as I don’t emulate some of the local citizenry by continuing on the bike trail. Of course I’d get stuck long before the bridge.

[thucydides]

I’ve biked across it for years now and frequently run across it, too. (Both for the simple utilitarian reason that I want to get to the other side.) It’s too narrow and I have plenty of stories. But overall it’s mostly fine.

Traffic has gone up a lot in the last few years but it’s still relatively light. I used to go a week without meeting traffic, now it’s a rare day. Passing an oncoming cyclist is no big deal in general, even with my dual panniers. I would argue the bigger problem is slowing down too much and becoming unstable. Passing cyclists going my way is more difficult so I don’t normally do it. I can’t say I’ve ever had much problem with pedestrians except when they can’t hear due to ambient noise combined with earbuds.

I loathe the short fence on the 66 side. To me that’s the most dangerous part. If someone does trip and lose control they’ll flip over that right into traffic.

The OP asked about the wider bits. I see people take advantage of those all the time, e.g., adjust their speed so that they hit the wide bit at an advantageous time. But, yeah, a proper trail would be at least as wide all the way through as the wide bits.

[thucydides]

I got a real nice reminder the other day about not being an ELITE rider on the Custis. I was WB and coming at the point where the trail crosses under I-66. You cross under 66 and then there’s a stop sign and blind intersection. This is about 200 yards before the Custis merges with the WOD. Anyway, the WB approach to the underpass is a downward slope and despite the slow-down signs it’s really easy to carry a lot of speed into the curve. But the next element of that area is that at certain times of the day the area gets very shaded. So you can see where this is headed. I come tearing around that curve carrying too much speed and I see a pedestrian. I see her later than I should because of the shade and my sunglasses, but I’m under control and shift to the lef….there’s a toddler right there in the left lane who had wandered off a bit from her mom. I’ll pause here to sing the praises of the disc brakes on my Spec TriCross. Because they really work and I did a quick dead stop right there. Yeah the toddler shouldn’t have been in the left lane but toddlers do that sort of thing and this is a congested area with the park and all. Mainly it’s a nice reminder to me to slow down more when coming up on that curve (and avoiding passing at the other blind curves the Custis features) and to not blow through that blind stop sign that comes at the end of underpass.

[thucydides]

The second sentence doesn’t make any sense. I don’t think the increased parking is leading to more cars driving on the CCT. What’s happening is that there is increased parking going on, presumably because of the conversion of the old surface lot into a park (not that I’m complaining about the park at all) and the fact that the new park is already a popular summer attraction. On top of this there is a definite increase in the number of cars that go down there looking to get on the Key, presumably because people are over-relying on GPS systems. I was running there last week and a lady asked me where the Key Bridge was. I pointed up as we just happened to be directly underneath it. Her GPS was telling her to take the entrance onto the Key. I guess her GPS is from a future when we have flying cars.

The big danger — at least in my experience — is people suddenly realizing they’re not where they want to be and then doing a careless u-turn.

[thucydides]

@essigmw 55201 wrote:

And it has a cool open air Spider in spider web exhibit that gives just about everyone the willies. People really walk out of their way to avoid it when going through the exit.

The Madagascar Golden Orb spider web? I love that. It could be my favorite part of the zoo. My daughter loves it, too. You can’t pay my son to go near it.

[thucydides]

Definitely not defending the dad, but yesterday I was showing one of my research assistants the cover of a report on cycling that was produced in Belgium. You can see it here [it’s a pdf]. I can’t imagine even seeing something like that in the US today.

[thucydides]

I understand the constraints involved, but that’s an atrocious course design. It’s probably sheer luck there hasn’t been a head-on collision between two racers. Given the circumstances the cyclists that whipped around and ended up on the left — and therefore right into a mess — did a pretty good job. It looks to me that the bunny-hopper did the right thing under the circumstances, he just didn’t lift quite enough. An emergency bunny hop at 30 mph isn’t easy. What a mess.

[thucydides]

@bobco85 54772 wrote:

There’s something about riding through a deep puddle or stream that brings out the little kid in us who loves to jump and splash around in rain puddles. Also, is it possible to ride through (or even watch someone ride through in this case) a deep puddle without saying or thinking, “Wheeee!”? (I think the answer is no)

I definitely see the pond as feature not a bug. I hit it at top speed this morning. Got a bit wet. This weekend I did a trail race in Richmond while Andrea was still going on. There were dozens of deep puddles. Many of runners tried to rim around the puddles. Not me. I splashed right through every one of those babies. I guess I’m 50 going on 5.

[thucydides]

I passed loads of the Torch “runners” today, too. They were mostly fine. But while I was taking the, ummmm, scenic route to work I stopped by a quite windy Hains Point for several laps. (The turn that takes me to work is around here somewhere, I know it.) There were a bunch of cops out there on bikes getting ready for a training exercise. Loads of them were noodling around beforehand in ones and twos. Would it be tacky of me to mention that not one, not a single one, that I saw ever stopped at a stop sign? Meanwhile a cop on a bike was stopping [civilian] cars and [civilian] bikes for running the stop sign at Buckeye and Ohio. Didn’t get me though.

[thucydides]

Do you think Pepco meant to leave that ladder strapped to the bridge (it lowers to some sort of platform)? It’s been there for quite a while now and looks like an engraved invitation for mischief. Graffitti at the least.

[thucydides]

This being NYC. In two months these same whiners will be whining about the lack of a bike station on their block. “How come W 59th has a bike station? They’re no better than us.”

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