Made it!
Wow -- what a day! The first leg began at Portland State University, on the South Park Blocks downtown. After crossing the Hawthorne Bridge into Southeast, we were soon cruising along the Springwater Corridor Trail through some gorgeous scenery. After 17.3 miles, most of it gently climbing, we reached the first rest stop at Gresham's Main City Park, where free bananas, energy bars, peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, and more were waiting for us.
The second leg was just barely over half the length of the first, at 8.8 miles. All of this time was spent on city streets, going through Gresham and Troutdale. The high point was a long, fast downhill run down to Marine Drive, after which we wound our way around the Gresham / Troutdale Airport on our way to the second rest stop at Blue Lake Park. Along with the other goodies, Hot Lips Pizza was serving up some awesome slices -- I went for the mushroom / pesto / cheese pizza, which was just the right thing at that point in time.
Although the third leg was actually a little shorter than the first (16.1 miles), it felt like the longest by far. It was almost entirely flat, just riding west along Marine Drive right beside the Columbia River (beautiful!), but we were riding into a headwind the whole time, with nothing to stop it as it swept along the gorge and right into our faces. A few hardcore types took the opportunity to pass a bunch of people, but I settled for just catching up to a group of riders who were moving at a speed I could maintain and joining their draft. Since I was just trying to keep up without using any more energy than I had to, less of my weight was on my pedals, so somewhere along this leg was where my butt really started to hurt, and my arms stopped wanting to support my upper body, but we reached the final rest stop by Smith / Bybee Lakes just in time.
That left just 10.2 miles to go, most of them right here in North Portland along bike paths and streets that I'm pretty familiar with (unlike much of the first and second legs, when I only occasionally really knew where we were.) Even though I was pretty tired and sore rolling into that last stop, it still felt good to leave, knowing that all that was left was a relatively short, easy ride to the finish. And that's what it turned out to be...after starting out at 8:45, and riding the full fifty miles, I crossed the finish line at 2:05, for a total time including rests of 5:20. Nothing to brag about, but I was just riding to finish the distance, not to do it any particular amount of time -- though interestingly enough, I was thinking last night that it would be nice to average 10 MPH so I could finish in five hours, and that's pretty close to what I did.
Finally, the day was capped off by a wonderful dinner there in the Park Blocks -- grilled fresh wild line-caught salmon; local, organic asparagus and salad; wild rice pilaf with hazelnuts and cranberries; and marionberry cobbler for desert, along with free local microbrews. Ahhh, perfection.