Photo Credit: Adelaide Now

Yesterday I rode in the BikeSA 2009 South Australia Amy’s Ride tour from Adelaide to McLaren Vale.  From the Amy Gillette Foundation:

Amy’s Ride provides the Amy Gillett Foundation with an opportunity to proliferate key messages of safe and responsible road use, increase awareness to the need for more shared respect, raise much needed funds and honor the memory of Amy.

The above photo is from the Adelaide Now story and photo gallery covering the ride.  As mentioned in the article, the weather was hot and sunny, and over 3,000 riders took part in the event.

I rode the 100km route that began at Flinders University, went down the Southern Expressway, then along the coast to Willunga, then up into the hills and finally back down to McLaren Vale.  The Southern Expressway, Willunga Hill and some other sections of the route were closed to car traffic.

The Expressway starts out with a steady 4km climb and ends with a fast downhill.  The next notable hill is 3km long Willunga Hill.  This one starts on the east side of Willunga and climbs at and average gradient of 7.5% for a total of 227m of elevation gain.  After Willunga Hill, the ride is mostly downhill with some very fast descents.

Not including my 10-15km commute to the start of the ride, my total time for the remaining 100km was 4:15 with approximately 40 minutes at rest stops/lunch.  I can’t give my usual data because even though my cyclo-computer  was working the night before the ride, it was not on the morning of the ride.  Oh well.  However, based on these estimates, my average speed was similar to that of my last tour, the 2006 MS 150.  Overall, this was a lot of fun, and contrary to what you may think, climbing Willunga Hill was definitely the highlight of the ride.

Tags: Amy's Ride, Willunga Hill

This story was posted on Monday, November 2nd, 2009 at 9:36 and is filed under Cycling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.