Rides and the In-State Awards Program. Congratulations to Nathan Stueber, IBA 69272 for completing the first general membership certification of the Ride Around Louisiana.
Dr. Howard Entman, my long time LD mentor, and I completed the validation and evaluation of the ride protocols Thursday-Friday, Jan 13-14. We rode to evaluated the level of effort necessary to safely and successfully complete the 1,220 miles of the Ride Around Louisiana. This validated the route close to the border, mandatory stops, establishing 30 hours for regular and 24 hours for Gold certification.
We started and finished our RALa in Slidell, going in a anti-clockwise route. We planned the route using Garmin BaseCamp, adding dwell time at each anticipated stop, to get an idea of the total time required. A couple of the locations we used for our evaluation ride were changed for the final list. See the RALa link above for the final list of mandatory stops. As you can see from the BaseCamp route properties, it was going to be a long ride: 1,220 miles, 21:40 riding and 22:55 total time.
At the start in Slidell, I zeroed out the GPS trip data to get an accurate total miles, riding, stopped and total route time. We did not stop for meals along the way. Howard ate out of his tank bag and I fasted the entire trip. Below is the snapshot of my GarminXT at the finish back at the Slidell starting point. As you can see, we did a pretty good job maintaining a consistent ride pace vs the BaseCamp route.
- Miles - 1,233.7 GPS, 1.224 MC Odo
- DBR Start: 06:07, 1/13
- DBR Finish: 4:48, 1/14
- Total Time: 22:41
- Moving Time: 20:18
- Stop Time: 2:23
- Moving Avg: 60.8 MPH
- Overall Avg: 54:4 MPH
Not bad for a couple guys in their 70s.
We were both using SpotWalla to record our track. I took required Start/Finish DBR & Odometer pictures. I was using Bubbler GPS Pro. I posted the Start/Finish DBR/Odo pictures to the SpotWalla route. I also did a Bubbler "OK" at each of the mandatory locations along the route. I added the odometer reading to the "OK" markers, but only the "Gas" markers recorded the odometer mileage in the remarks of the SpotWalla location marker. Below is my SpotWalla track of our Ride Around Louisiana.
Ride Around Louisiana - SpotWalla Map
