King of the Mountain, Individual Time Trial and the Tour de Montour

We've discussed the polka-dotted KOM (King of the Mountain) jersey in this space recently - the KOM is the best mountain climber in the Tour de France, currently Anthony Charteau of team BBox Bouygues Telecom.

We've also discussed the Yellow Jersey (the maillot jaune) which is reserved for the race winner. Currently the yellow jersey is worn by Alberto Contador of the Astana team.

The final winner of the Tour de France will be determined by an Individual Time Trial (ITT). Whereas most Tour stages are contested by teams, with various roles and strategies within the teams, the Individual Time Trial is just the bicyclist against the clock - no drafting, no helping, just the individual and the unforgiving distance. The ITT is almost always held on a flat course, and so there are two types of specialists in the peleton - there are climbers and there are ITT specialists, and usually they are two distinct groups.

It is rare unheard of to mix the ITT with a climbing event.

On September 25, here in Pittsburgh, there will be a mountain individual time trial, combining both worlds. The 2010 Tour the Montour includes a new King of the Mountain event.

Those competing in the Tour the Montour KOM event will be timed individually up a 7/10ths of a mile long hill (Hassam Rd - closed to traffic, not part of the trail). At an average of an 8% grade, the man and woman with the fastest times will truly be the "King" and "Queen" of the Mountain and will receive a special bicycling jersey for their effort.

Here's a link to the registration form.

Montour Trail Oasis: Enlow Station

Saturday I got to enjoy a bicycle ride with my daughter, and so I got to see something I've wanted to check out: the Enlow Station on the Montour Trail.


To get there, we took the newly-renumbered I376, Exit 56 (McClaren Road), drove away from the airport for about two miles and parked by the softball field.

We made a left turn onto the trail, which is a pretty optimal route for a young rider - there's a great illuminated tunnel on the trail, and the trail is quite flat. We rode east (getting off the bikes to cross two intersections) until it was time to turn around.

When we came back to the car we stopped at the Enlow Station, which is not quite a restored train station as much as an ice cream parlor fashioned out of a service station. Cold drinks, soft serve ice cream, hot dogs: all the needs of a recovering bicyclist.

There's not a lot of places along the Montour Trail to get a cold drink, let alone an excellent ice cream cone (I think of Farmhouse Coffee and the adjacent gyro shop as another oasis) and so I hope people will support the Enlow Station. Open seven days a week in the summer, 11am to 9pm.

Ohio River Trail: Coraopolis - Monaca - Beaver - Midland Bike Trail

But wait: there's more (good news about trails)!

The Ohio River Trail Council is working on a proposal to build a trail from Coraopolis, PA (north end of the Montour Trail) to Beaver, PA, and then to Midland PA on the Ohio/Pennsylvania border, where it ends close to the Columbiana, Ohio trail.



It's a very detailed proposal and the website includes some remarkably thorough documents identifying the history of the proposed route and all the municipalities and connections affected by the Ohio River Trail proposal. Also, there's a pretty informative Wikipedia page.

If When this is accomplished, you'd be able to ride from Midland to Washington DC on uninterrupted trails. Not everybody will do that, of course; it's enough that there will be a safe trail ride from Pittsburgh to Beaver, or from Monaca to Midland. You could certainly see people riding up from Pittsburgh, spending the night in a bed-and-breakfast, eating dinner at a restaurant, and riding back the next day.

(Midland, of course, is just a hop-skip-and-jump from the World's Largest Teapot. Talk about destination tourism!)

On the east side, this Ohio River Trail will connect to the Montour Trail, the Great Allegheny Passage, Cumberland MD and Washington DC. On the west side, the Ohio River Trail will be close to the East Liverpool-Cleveland trail they're building in Ohio, which connects to published trans-America routes. You couldn't build a new highway that would have a similar economic benefit.

The Ohio River Trail connects Beaver County to the existing trail system for Pittsburgh and DC, and will provide a future connection between the Cleveland trail system and Pittsburgh-DC. Who benefits? The benefits will accrue to the towns the trail passes through.

I believe that at the bottom line, in a zero-sum economy, these connected bike trails will do more for the economies of the towns they pass through than casinos will do for the places they're located. There's clean, green, fairly upscale money being generated in towns such as Frostburg, Meyersdale, Rockwood, Confluence, Connellsville, and West Newton. They've had their trails for a few years and are seeing real economic benefits from it. Towns like Coraopolis, Aliquippa, Monaca, Beaver and Midland will enjoy similar growth.

Excellent Pittsburgh to DC bike trip graphic

I took my first bicycle ride of the year Saturday on the Montour Trail, and although I suffered from being out of shape it was a real pleasure to be on the bike and on the trail again. The bike did real well after only a chain lube. I think I'll need a few more miles to get into a semblance of condition.

I met a rider named Mark who lives near Imperial, and while we were riding together he told me about his trip from Pittsburgh to DC, and it turns out he'd read the trip reports from our previous rides while planning his trip. It was a real boost to meet somebody that had read one of my posts and found it useful, and it was nice to have somebody to ride along with for a while.

Lawrence Walsh has an excellent article in the Sunday Post Gazette about
bicycle camping on the Great Allegheny Passage. What's great about Mr. Walsh is that he has lots of bike cred. I'd like to mention that the best thing about the single-wheeled BOB trailer shown in the photo is that when the trail degrades into double-track, the BOB trailer's single wheel follows the bicycle really nicely -- a double-wheeled trailer doesn't work.


On the GAP Yahoo Group I came across this excellent graphic of Sam & Jane's plan for a seven-day bike ride from Pittsburgh to DC. It's such an excellent chart I wanted to mention it. It combines distance, elevation, slope, towns, daily mileages, and their itinerary. When you look closely you'll see that they've (wisely) chosen to start on the trail at McKeesport, avoiding the on-road rides between SouthSide and McKeesport. I can't say enough about how well designed this is, my compliments to Mr. Menchyk.
This map poses an interesting challenge because the peak looks very steep, but when you consider the lateral scale (350 miles) and the vertical scale (less than 1/3 of a mile), it tends to give the wrong impression. For instance, from Pittsburgh to the continental divide, the elevation increases 1600 feet over 125 miles - that's mild and gentle, but it looks dramatic. I think Mr. Menchyk did a nice job of putting in lots of context and the explicit "max grade" value.

Ah, to have a bicycle in spring time.

The Flirty Temptations of Imminent Spring

Intermittent warm days are flirting and tempting me, and soon it's going to be the best time of the year: bicycle time. In fact, Friday afternoon I saw four bicyclists: an intrepid commuter, and three roadies.

This is the time when I break out my wishlists from previous years and try to pick a few bike events to plan the rest of my life around.



The Five Boro Bike Ride is Sunday, May 3rd. Even though it's not a classic epic distance, it's a remarkable route, and it would be cool to ride over the Verrazanno bridge.

TOSRV is the next weekend, May 9-10. A very well run overnight road ride.
I'm not sure how many distant rides my car and my marriage will make.

Ride to Work Day is Friday, May 15th. I need to do this, this year.

The Montour Trail's newest section, connecting Morganza Road and Route 19 in Peters Township, is one of the most attractive trail segments you'll find anywhere, and I hope to be out there often this year.

Election Day Bike Ride

It's election day, when we all need to focus on priorities, so I took the day off work and rode my bike. I started in McDonald, PA, kind of south of the PIT airport, and rode a newly opened section of trail to a favorite coffee shop in Peters Township.

The new trail section removes the need for an on-road detour that included hills that made me want to weep and call for my mommy. I love the new section because it's much much flatter (as railroad beds tend to be) but also because it's quite beautiful - bridges, tunnels, creeks, it's got it all.



Here's a GPS plot showing the old detour in purple and the newly opened trail route in yellow. EDIT: colors corrected /EDIT (I have more technology on my bicycle than most airplanes had in WW2.) You'll see I79 on the left side, and Route 19 on the right side to help you get oriented.


You can download the GPS file here. The next two charts compare the GPS elevation profile of the old/new routes. I hate climbing hills, I hated that detour, and I love the new route.

Note the distance on the detour is 4.0 miles, and the distance of the new trail is 3.6 miles. The altitude range on the detour elevation profile is from 850' to 1150', while the altitude range on the new trail profile is 875' to 1050'. GPS altimetry is not very accurate, but the profile trends are valid.



I had a few treats along the way. I fell into conversation with a rider going in my direction and it turned out to be Charles Beaumariage, who is a major player with the Montour Trail (which means, he does a lot of work and gets sniped at for it) - I believe he's a member of the Board Of Directors. I told him how cool the new trail segment was and thanked him for his efforts. Nice guy, it was good to meet him.

I had planned to stop at Farmhouse Coffee which is trailside in McMurray, PA. Excellent indie coffee shop, bike friendly, cool little seating area out back, WIFI and all you could hope for inside. Today I tried the special: a "Cubano", which is 2 shots of espresso, 2 sleeves of raw sugar, for $2. WOW. I had a Cubano and a cheese danish and it was like somebody pressed the Turbo button on my bicycle when I started back.

I had forgotten that since the time zone change, it would get dark earlier, and I was riding in the dark for the last half-hour. Fortunately I had my Planet Bike Alias HID light with me. I turned it on as I approached the (newly paved) National Tunnel and it really lit up the reflectors in the tunnel.

This new section IMO is the best few miles on the Montour Trail. I saw other improvements: the newly paved and marked National Tunnel, new trailhead placards, more mileposts, dispensers filled with doggy-doo bags, and a lot of "regular" people out enjoying the trail.

Stats for the day, for the numerically-obsessed: 33 miles, average moving speed 10.0 mph. I drove home in the dark, dropped my bike off at home, and voted. Life is good.