Machka 

Where did you ride this weekend? Or during the surrounding week.
It's a long weekend in Canada ... if you're Canadian, did you go on a tour? cycle any events?
For all of us, whether we have a long weekend or not ... tell us all about your rides. What's the weather like where you are? Got pics?


[HR][/HR]


Saturday -- We had sunshine!! It wasn't particularly warm, with a high of 13C when we started riding and dropping to 11C by the time we finished riding. But we had sunshine! That was a nice change.

Rowan and I rode from home today on a relatively short 22.3 km ride with 557 metres of climbing (that's a 2.5 climb ... hilly route).

The steepest climb reached 25% near the top of a long-ish nasty climb. Amazingly, astoundingly ... I cycled up!! But I was in the granniest of my granny gears while riding at a whopping 4 km/h and very seriously thinking about walking. That was a tough, tough climb. (Somehow, Rowan stayed in his middle chainring)

But gorgeous views all along the way. The route follows the coast of a peninsula just south of where we live, so lots of cliffs, and islands, and water views.

Machka 

(click photos for more)

Machka 

Anyone else riding this weekend?

Machka 

Sunday -- after yesterday's hilly ride, we opted to do something a little flatter today. So 26 km along the foreshore on the Eastern Shore.

There were a few little hills, but nothing significant. However, my legs were feeling them after yesterday's ride!

And it was another sunny but chilly day.


Oh yes ... post ride, we had half a pizza each!! That's the first pizza we've eaten in 3 months. I've been doing the CICO diet and have lost 12 kg. While we were grocery shopping, I noticed that certain pizzas weren't actually all that high in calories, so I figured ... why not. Yummy!! Plus we had a nice salad made by Rowan too.

znomit

300km Brevet yesterday (and a little bit of today, as it took me nearly 19hrs).
This was my first time organising a brevet and I think it went OK. Five of us signed up.
We rode the "Forgotten Highway" which is a pretty epic piece of back country New Zealand road, that handily is 150km long so makes a perfect out and back.

Things went mostly to plan except the 12km (x2) of gravel road, which is usually hard packed and very easy riding had been freshly gravelled with the worst gravel I've ever seen. From five riders it claimed two tyres on the way out and one more on the way back. I had planned to walk the tougher section on the way back but it seemed much more ridable so just powered through.

https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/776601592

2manybikes

Up here it's still Sunday morning. 7:30 am. I'm going to ride in a couple of hours.

Machka 

Right now it's 9:50 pm on Sunday. Are you really only 14 hours behind?

a77impala

Yesterday I was on my daily ride and it turned into doing my age+.I did 24 miles on wet streets, the sun came out,, called a friend and he joined me up to mile 67. Then rode to see my 90 year old friend and had 75 miles when I got home. Haven't ridden my age since I was 68, now soon 71.
Feel great this morning, no more than normal arthritis pains!

2manybikes

The time of your post is shown here as 07:49 am ( in other words 07:50). My clock now says 7:57.

9:50pm for you is apparently 7:50 am here. So, yes.

I'm in Eastern daylight zone here. Maybe in Canada you were in another time zone?

I don't remember where you were. Time Zone Map

Machka 

Yeah, I've got Vancouver time as my secondary time on my computer ... that's Pacific time. It's now 5:24 am on Sunday in Vancouver.

Machka 

I didn't take any photos today, but we did this route a few weeks ago. This was some of our scenery ...

bruce19

Saturday: 41.5 mi. w/2400 ft climbing @15 mph through The Devil's Hopyard in East Haddam, CT. Beautiful place and the road was just re-paved. Looks like they could have filmed The Hobbit there.

Sunday: 27.3 mi. @14 mph with three friends who rode Saturdays' ride with us. I think there was about 1300 ft. of climbing today.

kbarch

Gran Fondo New York today!

I'm a poor Cat 5 racer and I've done a couple of centuries before, and those rides are fun in their ways. But all together? A 100 mile race? Wow! It wasn't merely fun plus fun, or even fun times fun, it was fun to the power of fun! Yes, it was very difficult, and yes it was very exhausting, but man, I have never so thoroughly enjoyed so much work! Plus, it's super awesome when you're racing down a hill, the cops see you coming and they stop traffic for you.

Although I made it a point to draft and participate in a paceline whenever I could, because there was a short, steep-ish climb (my specialty) near the end, I found myself riding solo on the last mile or so. So the finish line announcer made it a point to call that out. "and , representing the United Sates, it's Kevin Brown, coming in solo-style! Downtown Kevin Brown!" Although I figured well over half the riders had already finished, I also knew there were many, MANY riders behind me- perhaps a few hundred - and I thought I made a respectable time (7:44 total, 7:06 moving time over 101 miles and 8,068' climbing) for a 51 year old who trains indifferently and always gets dropped from races in the park

I was kind of bummed that I had to start from so far back - guess I arrived a little late, because I couldn't even see the corrals - traffic just stopped moving (we were on the George Washington Bridge, so that comes with the territory ). Needless to say, with nearly 5,000 riders, it was a few minutes before those of us at the back got rolling. But it worked out well in a way. Originally, I had feared that I'd have to stop at the first aid/refreshment station because I would be so amped up over the first segment, would work too hard at the start, and would need to settle down. But because it was such a slow start, that wasn't an issue. Turned out to be a good warm-up; we got there way sooner than expected and I was happy to pass it by.

In the end, I couldn't believe how elated I felt crossing the finish line. I was just riding along, in the drops, trying to stay solid, and there it was - Done!

Machka 

They do that to the gravel roads in Canada too. Just when they've become nicely rideable ... they lay down the worst gravel imaginable.

Congrats on the 300K.

woodcraft

Davis (CA) DC on Saturday.

190, ~7,500'.

Finished in 11:34 moving, 14 hrs overall.

Substantial headwind for the final 60 miles, otherwise good conditions.

I did this ride last in 1974, 1975, & 1976- 39 years ago!

Didn't beat my best time from then, but faster than the two others.

alexaschwanden

Friday: 22.8 miles
saturday: 103.1 miles
sunday :76 miles

Machka 

That's great!!

2manybikes

Sunday the 17th 92.97 miles.

Could have done more, but I got home about 11:00 pm. I'm still awake at 1:31 am.

Pirkaus

Nice Sunday ride before going to play with my grandkids for the afternoon.

One of these days I'll learn to stop and take some pictures.

Jakedatc

Fri: 48mi 2600' climbing was supposed to have 2 friends with me but they both bailed so put on my music and off i went. Legs felt a lot worse than the avg speed turned out to be which was a nice surprise (i try to leave my garmin on the map so i don't psych myself out with high or low avg) Really nice route though in W. RI into E. CT

Sun: nice 27mi ride with my GF in CT. nice quiet farm roads with mostly good pavement. I swear my avg's would go up 1mph if riding in RI wasn't like riding on rumble strips all the time haha.

bikecrate

It was a pretty typical weekend of riding. Saturday 35 + miles around S. Tampa. Sunday I went to Picnic Is. and then Davis Is. for 40 miles. The interesting thing at my water bottle refill point on Picnic Is. I saw two cyclist with really unusual brand bicycles I haven't seen before in person. I had to ask and it turned out they were from the U.K. They were here on business and brought their bikes for the week. We talked for a bit about some local bike routes and shops. I didn't ride with them, I would have slowed them down with my hybrid, but I keep bumping into them the rest of the morning. It was fairly funny. As they say in England...nice blokes.

Machka 

What brand?

IcySmooth52

Went for a 72 miles yesterday on a route with MANY hills. I don't know the grade measurements of hills, but the altimeter on my cycling computer (Blackburn Atom SL 6.0) told me one was ~1 miles long and a climb of 300 feet! I've done this one many times before, but I had never paid attention to the altimeter before.

No proud of my average speed on this one, at only 16 mph. Last 5 miles were; "DON'T YOU DARE PUT A FOOT DOWN!" and "You can do it, just remember the beer at home!"

But I had stopped once before to help a turtle cross the road.

Long Tom

A buddy and I kinda faked each other out. Before the ride we were both whining about how we felt, preparing the other guy for a "light" ride... which appears to have fueled the contrarian in both of us... Once we got going, we felt great and ended up doing a challenging-terrain 50 miles.

bikecrate

Cube was one. Which I don't think you can get in the U.S. At least I haven't seen any here, but I have seen them online. The other one I didn't recognize at all and I've totally forgotten the name. Nice red bike though.