10,000 people rode 202 miles in excellent weather over the weekend for Cascade Bicycle Club’s annual Seattle to Portland Classic. I was deathly ill and not even able to see folks off Saturday morning, but there was a lot of good coverage of the ride in the Seattle Times.
First, the Times hung out with the teens in Cascade’s Major Taylor Program who were getting ready to embark on the double century ride: From Seattle Times:
Linda Ba, 18, of White Center, was initially intimidated about doing her first STP three years ago. She had put in less than 100 training miles — far fewer than the recommended 1,000. She finished nonetheless.
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When she graduated from Evergreen High School last month, she was touched when another student said she was inspired by Ba’s cycling diligence.
This year, her sister Zaza Ba, 16, will be doing the STP for the first time. She, too, is inspired by her sister’s perseverance.
“If you can ride 200 miles, you can do anything,” Zaza Ba said.
After the ride, the Times also wrote a wonderful piece about nine-year-old Aaryea Naik, who completed the ride far ahead of many adult riders. From the sounds of it, Naik has been training enough to leave me in the dust, too:
Ashvin Naik knew his 9-year-old son was game for the 202-mile Seattle-to-Portland bike race when after a recent 80-mile training ride Aaryea Naik was still bouncing with energy.
On Sunday, with Seattle a day behind him and Portland in view, Aaryea still had power to spare. His pace kicked up from about 10 to 15 mph in the final miles, and the father-son team finished around 5 p.m., well ahead of many other riders.
Biking Bis was down by Seward Park to see everyone through. He has some great photos and ride history to check out.
It appears one person was injured in Centralia after he fell over at a stop light and was run over by a truck. He was flown to a hospital in Vancouver. I wish him a complete and speedy recovery.
In other sour news, some complete asshat/assailant dumped some tacks on Highway 30 in Oregon. Several people got flats and one person was injured. From Cascade’s M.J. Kelly:
The Oregon Dept. of Transportation swept Highway 30 prior to the event, and we had the St. John’s Bridge swept. Unfortunately some tacks were spread on the route. Our support vehicles did a great job addressing the issue when they found out, and swept as much as they could on the scene.
Congratulations to everyone who finished this year! Here’s a photo slideshow from the STP 2011 Flickr pool:
Comments
2 responses to “STP news: 10,000 people (including a 9-year-old) ride from Seattle to Portland”
I read the Times article yesterday about the nine-year old, and I am indeed impressed! In fact I have an acquaintance new to cycling and just hours earlier he had expressed interest in doing the STP next year; when we saw each other later I informed him of this kid and his incredible feat so of course he has more inspiration than ever before!
For those like myself who avoid crowds, we went out on Saturday and did the original Stevens Pass highway from the bottom at Scenic( a former RR town) up to the top at the resort. Its a great contrast to STP, no cars can use the road since its closed(but has a pedestrian bridge for cyclists, etc) and we saw only three other riders, all who had rode up traffic-plagued Highway 2.
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