Bike the Boros, September 10, 2016

Transportation Alternatives, a cycling advocacy group in New York City, sponsors the NYC Century Tour, an organized ride where you can ride 100 miles (a century), or 62 miles (metric century, 100 kilometers), or 31 miles (metric half century) all entirely within New York City!


It’s also called “Bike the Boros,” although you don’t get to all five boros as in the Five Boro Ride. On the 100 mile route you get to all but Staten Island. The other two routes also omit the Bronx, so you see Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens.


Another difference from the Five Boro Ride is that the roads are not closed to cars, but open to regular traffic.


Usually, the NYC Century is held on the second Sunday in September, but this year, that Sunday was the 15th anniversary of 9/11. The Tour was moved to Saturday.


It turned out the high temperature was 90 F with humidity around 70%.


Candace and I rode the metric century and wound up with almost 66 miles. City riding can be pretty exhausting due to all the stopping and starting and not being able to go very fast. With that and the heat and humidity we took a lot of breaks and it took us most of the day to finish the ride.


As usual, I recorded the ride with my GPS and uploaded the track which can be seen on ridewithgps.com.