I finally made the full ride from Riverhead to Montauk and back, all told it was 112 miles and just over 5.5hrs of moving time.
After covid cancelled my marathon plans for this year, in May I decided to buy a new triathlon bike and focus on biking this summer with the ultimate goal to ride from Riverhead to Montauk, a round trip of a little over 100 miles. Training leading up to the long ride was mostly done indoors during the week and long rides outside on the weekends, starting from Riverhead and getting a little closer to Montauk each weekend.
I did the actual ride on September 5th, and it was a beautiful day for it, sunny, 70’s with low humidity, and a light wind (turned into a tailwind on the way back). I felt good throughout the ride, even added a mile towards the end to hit 112 miles.
The route is decent for cycling, most of it is a wide shoulder bike lane next to roads with speed limits up to 55mph, so some sections have cars zooming by entirely too fast, but there are also long stretches with so much traffic the cars seem like they are standing still while I cruise by. It is also relatively flat, and the largest hills are in the last 5ish miles towards Montauk. Probably the most annoying part is that detour around South Hampton. There’s a town ordinance that prohibits biking on the main street. They have 2 or 3 safety officers at each crosswalk that will stand in front of you and make you dismount and walk your bike, and the 3 I asked before finding my own way around didn’t know any detours. The rest of the 50 miles and other towns is clear sailing (well biking). Here are some pics along the route from google street view:
I had thought to take some pictures of the bike lanes or maybe even a video while riding but mostly when I the idea occurred I didn’t want to have to stop, get off my bike and get my phone out and all that.
Above is one of the pictures I did take on the side of the road, and while it looks nice the view from the top of the hill was way better. By the time I decided to take the picture I was at the bottom of the hill and wasn’t about to climb back up just to take a picture. I probably could have, at the end of the ride I still felt pretty good, like I could ride more. Legs tired, but not dead.
All this belies how much technical trouble I’ve had completing this ride. Two weeks ago when I was going a 100 mile ride I got a flat tire, and my spare tubes did not have long enough valve stems for my new deep rimmed wheels. I had to do my 100 mile ride indoors which was rough. Then last week I got rained out on Saturday and on Sunday had 4 flat tires (two thanks to wrong sized tubes) that ended my ride after about 60 miles. And this time out I even had some issues, my seat post slid down and required some adjustment on the road, I nearly lost a contact about 50 miles in – it fell out against my sunglasses – I managed to get it back in but my hands were covered in salt from sweat and that stung just a little, and with about 3 miles to go my pedal came off. It wasn’t serious, just needed to be screwed back on, but could have been disastrous since I was rounding a wide turn at about 25mph – luckily there were no cars near and I was able to pull off safely to fix it.
Here is my ride data:
| Average | Max | |
| Speed | 19.9mph | 35.3mph |
| Heart Rate | 149bpm | 173bpm |
| Cadence | 79 | 176 |
| Power | 190w (207w NP) | 889w |
| Calories | 5001 |
Of course one of the best parts of doing these long rides is to make up for all the calories you burn. For dinner I had 3 ingredient macaroni and cheese (a pound of pasta, a pound of cheese, and a pound of evaporated milk) with a pound of bacon mixed in, and some frozen peas tossed in for the illusion of health.
And of course the strava link because if it isn’t on strava it didn’t happen: