Hains Point, Like a Crit, Only Sketchier

If you live in the DC area, ride a bike and have ever considered shaving your legs, then Thursday nights mean you go to Hains Point for sprint night. If you are unfamiliar with Hains Point I've included this map to help this diatribe make a bit more sense.


View Hains Point in a larger map

You'll notice that Hains Point is basically a triangle. I've color coded the route for how it usually behaves. The blue line begins after the arbitrary sprint line when in most cases people sit up, soft pedal and let it regroup, doesn't always happen. The red line is when people drop the proverbial hammer and decide to not only ride fast, but try and run into every parked car, pedestrian, slower cyclist, dog, cat, child and tour bus until reaching that sprint line. Then, as you'd guess, the process repeats.

Last night I decided that I'd go give the good old Hains Point ride another chance. If speed work is really as important as people make it out to be there's really not many rides in the area where top end speed is going to be hit as frequently as here. The reason why I've started to skip Hains Point in recent weeks is because as you'd probably guess from my description of the red line above, it's basically the sketchiest shit on the planet. As if getting 50 or so super ego driven cyclist together and painting a line on the road that means absolutely nothing wouldn't make things dangerous enough, Hains Point is essentially where everyone in DC who is trying to get fitter goes. And for the very reason that Hains Point is attractive for all of these various fitness seekers, low traffic and one way street, it's basically now made it more dangerous than if we did this ride in the middle of the mall. That doesn't make any sense you might say. Oh no? Allow me to give some examples that I witnessed from just last night before deciding my life was more valuable than an imaginary green jersey ripped to shreds and stuck to road rash.

What might come as a surprise to you, is the biggest hazard at Hains Point (controlling for the fact that a bunch of cyclist are riding well above the speed limit just inches from each other) isn't traffic. Traffic is relatively light and when their are cars, the group is moving so much faster than they are, they generally get out of the way. There are actually two hazards and their percentage of danger is probably hard to calculate, first, pedestrians, who I'd like to classify as walkers, runners and tourists, second, other people on bikes.

The pedestrians at Hains Point literally come in all shapes and sizes but one thing they have in common is no interest in getting out of the way. I guess because it's a touristy area with light traffic people forget that it's still a road and just walk across it at will. There aren't really sidewalks so apparently to joggers, running both with and against the flow, the best place to run is in the middle of the road. It's nothing for a group of 5 or 6 power walkers, "power" being used loosely, to walk six wide taking an entire lane and refusing to move. All of these obstacles are encountered every single lap and depending on who's at the front of the group, the reaction and subsequent avoidance can be smooth or a poetic sequence of brake grabbing, swerving, sprinting back up to speed, swerve again, fight for a wheel, grab some brakes, swerve, sprint, curse, brakes, swerve, repeat, all the way around.

Last night on the second lap there was a gentleman training for the next Rocky film running up the dashed white line in the middle of the road shadow boxing the air as he went. The group was 2 to 3 wide at this point and I was right on the white line. I saw the Rocky impressionist and said to the guy trying to fight me for the wheel in front that we're gonna need to move and he ignored me. I got a bit closer and said it again, ignored. Our arms are now touching and he still isn't moving to the inside to create space. I weigh my options which are to lean on this guy and force him in, which could create an insane over reaction by him and everybody causing a massive pile up, or at the last second, swerve out of the group around the boxer and create pass manic, I chose that, panic and cursing ensue. One guy yells at me for not calling it out and I point to my friend who wouldn't move in and that seems to settle the debate. When I told Jill this story she did not feel my same amount of annoyance since there actually wasn't an accident, but this could have ended very, very badly. Glad it didn't. Oh, I then went on to win that sprint. Where's my green jersey? (Jill thought this should be the story I lead with, not the boxer I almost ran over from behind.)

More and more people seem to be riding bikes these days. Great for the bike industry, bad for people on bikes. Why would I say such a thing? Because there's only so many places to go where a ride of this nature can take place safely and coincidentally it's the same place everybody who has a bike wants to go to ride as well. I couldn't tell you how many pairs or groups of 3 or 4 on hybrids all cruise around at 12mph side by side, but not shoulder to shoulder, effectively blocking the lane. There are far more people on bikes than pedestrians but just like the pedestrians, most of them think the lack of traffic equals a free reign to ride on whatever piece of the two lanes they feel like. Last night, after the third lap and avoiding at least one disaster per lap I decided I'd had enough. When I soft pedaled by the parking lot I saw a group of at least 100 bikes in a big group being given instructions by one guy. From the looks for the group and bikes straight lines were not going to be ridden. I have no idea what that group did to effect the fast group, but I'm certainly glad I wasn't there to find out.

When I lived in Oakland and used to do the Port Ride on Tuesdays I would marvel at how sketchy it was with all the squirrels that would show up. But, at least at the port, the only people out there were bikes and the occasional semi on a 4 lane wide road. There's a solid number of squirrels at Hains Point which would naturally give one cause for concern, but in order to be safe you've got to not only watch for squirrels but pedestrians, outside bikes and an erratic group, for me, it's too much. Going down in the obvious inevitable pile up that is going to happen at Hains Point is not worth any amount of top end speed work gained. I think winning a sprint against guys who go there every week proves that. Last night was the last time I'll be participating in that ride. Hains Point Sprints, nice knowing you, but I'm out.