The Tour of the Litchfield Hills, a charity fundraising tour to benefit the fight against cancer. The ride started in Torrington, Connecticut. Many of my club mates participated in the ride. There were options for 30, 50, and 75 miles. We did the 75 mile route. National Womens Road Race Champion Katherine Curi of the Webcore team showed up to do the ride, and ended up riding with a group from my club.
Curi is a native of Goshen, Conn. There was a large turnout for the mass start at 8:00 a.m. I figured there would be a large pack, but it split up pretty quickly on the hills climbing out of Torrington. I felt pretty good on the hills. Jim from my club was riding, so I decided to back off the pace of the front group a little and stick with him. I’m not sure how long I would have been able to stick with the front group anyway, and didn’t really want to ride alone. Jim was good company.
The ride was on really nice roads. I’ve been on most of the route before either riding or driving, but I don’t get over in that area of Connecticut often, and it is a great area for riding. There were a lot of rolling hills, with a few step climbs.
There were quite a few supported stops stocked with water and bananas. I felt great until about the 60 mile mark, and then started feeling the fatigue set in. There was a bit of a headwind the last 10 miles. We averaged 18.2 MPH.
Back at the finish there were sandwiches, pizza, fruit, and drinks. There was an auction were someone bid over $2000 for a signed Lance Armstrong photo. In all, $57,000 was raised to help cancer related causes in the local community, and over 800 riders turned out to participate, exceeding the expectations of the event organizers.
This was certainly a ride I will look forward to doing again in the future.
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