2nd of May Saturday rides

[Biciclista]

Wow, I"m first?
I rode 20 city miles today. My first Solo from home to the Burke. Continued on until i got to my son's house (1/2 block from the Burke-Gilman trail, how awesome is that?!?)
Then while he got ready to go I washed dishes. We hopped back on bikes and rode up the hill to the Eyedoctor. He rides a fixie bike and left me far behind on the hill.
He was rusty he said, out of shape from not riding. I'm here to tell you that he's strong!
Anyway; from there I went back south and cheated a bit with some bus riding because the weather was deteriorating. Wait! while I was on the bus the sun came out.
Now it's pouring.

[BabyBlueNTulsa]

This has been a depressing week here in Tulsa. You guys maybe have heard in the news that the area has had record rainfall this week... Well , it's true! It's rained every day since our tour of hills a week ago!

Since I HATE riding in the rain, I haven't ridden since then. :-(

Hate to think of what this weather is doing to my double century bid that is later this month....gasp!

Oh well, can't wait to read about all your DRY rides today. I'll be living vicariously through them!

[Biciclista]

sorry, mine was not exactly a dry ride.

[DebW]

63 mile ride for me, described under the "Adventure" thread. It combined biking and hiking to a waterfall. Probably the hardest ride I've done in 2 years, but still good.

[OakLeaf]

For my first "real" ride since I came back home, I had a choice between a short lazy cruise with the club, or a ride with another group that I knew would kill me. Guess which one I chose. :rolleyes:

I'm not going to get stronger or get my hill legs back by cruising. So I checked it out with a couple of the stronger riders ahead of time and they assured me I'd be welcome.

It didn't help that my front derailleur started acting up again, so that I had to climb the toughest hills of the day in my 39x25. Once we finally reached the first stop sign, another tweak got it shifting properly again, but I'm mystified as to what's causing it. :( By the time we hit the lunch break with almost 3,000 feet of climbing already under our legs, I was ready to take a somewhat flatter route the rest of the way.

Just after the break, two State Patrol cars passed us, and we soon reached the scene of an accident. :eek::( A mini-van was mostly upside down against a light pole. One of the other riders overheard a bystander telling the cop, "I yelled at him to stop, but he just took of running." I don't know whether he meant the van driver, or if there was someone else involved - there was a Kawasaki Mule parked by the side of the road as well, maybe it was in the road when the van came around? The ambulance and fire truck were already on scene, but it didn't look like they were doing anything. I sure hope no one was badly hurt.

When I split off five or six miles later, I was joined by one of the riders I'd exchanged emails with (just keeping me company really, but he did say his legs were kind of fried from hill repeats yesterday), and another rider who said he was having IT band twinges and wanted to take it easy. 61 miles, 4400 feet of climbing. It would take about 1,000 Florida miles to get that much elevation gain. :p So I don't feel too bad about getting my *ss kicked.

I am really bummed because my Garmin corrupted the history file and so I have nothing to show for it in my training logs except for the data summary I could salvage and manually enter into SportTracks. :(:mad: I just re-read the release notes to the firmware update they released last week and it was supposed to correct a problem of corrupt history files. :rolleyes:

[Fredwina]

Did about 60, with gray skies. actauly managed to keep up. (getting my bent legs) until another bent rider had a flat. two female bent rider in the same town , unpossible!
http://lh5.ggpht.com/_vuerRrNlUQI/SfzK4_cZYXI/AAAAAAAABYs/W-VZbuGqkz4/s640/100_0505.jpg
we cut the ride a little short, but I add some on the end and the beginning

[AnnieBikes]

Rain here, too, all week. I was at the Y for spinning this morning. It was a good workout, though. Our plan for tomorrow looks like it is going to get rained out, too. :mad:

[salsabike]

Yikes. I did a 48 mile ride to Marymoor Park, around Lake Samm, and back through Marymoor to home base (Logboom Park). Light rain, not a problem at all. THEN I met a friend to walk around Greenlake, and we got HAMMERED by what appears to be a monsoon. Twice, actually, since we stopped about 2/3 of the way around for coffee, and got soaked again on the last mile. Jeez.

My spouse just finished a 200K solo, ending up riding the last 30 miles in the aforesaid monsoon.

I could SWEAR this storm wasn't in the forecast we both read yesterday.

I am grateful for dry clothes and a warm house tonight, and for knowing that Chris finished his 200K safely and is on the way home now too.

[deeaimond]

Did a round island ride (100+kms) but behind someone who'd never ridden more than 40kms at any one go ever. Needless to say It was painful, but I'd promised to stay behind him for the ride. He was hard to motivate though. a tad too sarcastic for my liking. And because of his speed holding back the entire group, we all got stuck in the rain at the end, 3am in the morning sitting at a very wet macdonalds in the mad wind. Had to ride home in a drizzle at 3.30am. But completed 104km at night. under 6 hrs even though we were CRAWLING (17-20 km/hr) Good ride to train up endurance for next weekend's ride. I'm riding into Malaysia! A town 130km up north from us. I think the sun will be the biggest challenge. cloudless and scorching. the kind that gives u blisters... excited!!

[Susan Otcenas]

Salsa,

We got the same monsoon you did!

We rode the 65 mile route of the Ride Around Clark County today. It drizzled most of the way to 35 miles. After that it dried up and was cloudy until 45-50 miles. Then the sun came out and it was warm and wonderful (though breezy) until we finished at around 1:15. By the time we started the drive back home, it was raining hard, and I was glad we were done!

After I had a shower, I had a nap :D and the WIND and HAIL woke me up. We had gale force winds for about 2 hours. It was NUTS. We'd originally planned to do the century route - man oh man, was I glad we'd changed our minds!

Finished off the day with Mexican food with some ride friends @ 6pm after we'd all cleaned up. Many pitchers of margaritas were consumed...

Susan

[msincredible]

Just a short ride for me today, 15 miles round trip rolling hills with a friend to the store for groceries, I hauled dinner back for both of us. :)

[mthr3brghtys]

30 miles today - some in rain, all on the tandem. My first time ever on a tandem :rolleyes: Mostly flat, but windy. Interesting...

[kermit]

Went to Key Biscayne where they happened to be holding an Olympic distance tri. Lots of people. Saw a girl riding the tri on a beach cruiser. The bridges had to be hell on that. Great weather, sunny but got pretty windy at the end. Two trips over the big bridge, going down was the fun part. Passed a guy (poser) on a pink Orbea, DUDE! I hope that your girlfriends bike!

[maillotpois]

200 k - 195k of which was in a cold downpour. Oh well.

[gnarwhal]

Rode a mere 6 miles with hubby and son at a trail centre, some red some light black. Got wet feet going through a river :D

[emily_in_nc]

26 mile "market" ride with DH on our Bike Fridays. To the post office, then quite a few rural "fun miles", then back to town to our food co-op and ironically, two auto parts places for polishing supplies for our sailboat! Overcast and mid-70s temps made this a perfect day for riding. Had a blast, and it was my longest ride of the year! :D

[salsabike]

9191

[maillotpois]

Oh salsa - I love those little guys!! How wonderful!

[Caroline]

My saturday was 170km in the Wicklows mountains. A wanted to go for a recovery sunday spin but woke up too late ... oh well.

[kfergos]

Saturday I did a nice but awfully hilly-feeling 64-mile ride from Marlboro down to Oxford, through North Oxford and Leicester (I think) up to Paxton -- Route 56 is really beautiful for a ways there -- through Holden (some friends let me use their bathroom) and accidentally into Worcester (oops, I guess I was on Ararat Street and not West Mountain Street; good thing West Boylston Street connects them, even if it's a horrible mile of Worcester's worse side), and then home via Shrewsbury (up the steep hill by St. John's Church, but it didn't seem as bad as last time I rode up it with my old double. Ah, the beauty of a triple) and Westboro. Gorgeous day; they predicted rain, but then it ended up warming up and getting sunny, so I just did a jersey and shorts, carrying my vest and arm warmers much of the way. I didn't really see many other people on bikes, but I did see a ton of people out mowing their lawns. Has the old-fashioned, man-powered push mower (http://www.nationalgardencenter.com/images/Push-Mower.jpg) died? What's with riding mowers for lawns less than half an acre in size?

I also saw a car that had sat in a driveway so long that it had sunk down into the asphalt. I rode by, thought the tires were flat, did a double-take, and then realized the bottom third of the wheels had sunk deep into the driveway asphalt. I wondered how they're gonna get it out? :D :confused:

All in all took me about 4.5 hours, I think. It was a very nice day and a pleasant ride, although I'd kind of like to find people to ride with on these longer routes. Hmmm.

[denny]

Finally got some flat terrain training time this week in Atlanta. I got in 36 miles on the Silver Comet before having to get out of the way of yet more storms and tornado warnings. However, the most interesting thing on the ride was this humungous turtle in the middle of the trail. Never seen anything like it with a dragon like tail. After we all gawked a bit at this unusual sighting in the middle of the trail a nice rider from Team in Training moved him out of the path with the turtle kicking, hissing and rising to an aggressive posture.
Ingrate:D He's lucky another islander unlike me could have turned him into a succulent Turtle soup.:) I tried to post his pics but it needs resizing and I'm too lazy and tired right now to try.

[channlluv]

Did about 60, with gray skies. actauly managed to keep up. (getting my bent legs) until another bent rider had a flat. two female bent rider in the same town , unpossible!
...
we cut the ride a little short, but I add some on the end and the beginning

What are bent legs?

Roxy - nice of you to stop and help with the flat

[channlluv]

I got in 20 easy miles around Lake Miramar. It was beautiful, sunny afternoon, marred only by a wreck into a sticker bush by a four-year-old that I came up on during my third lap. Luckily, I had some Neosporin + Pain Relief, large Band-Aids, and some Kleenex in my bike bag. I didn't have any clean water for her mom to wash the wounds with. Poor little thing was really banged up and crying hard. I suggested her mom use the adhesive on the bandage to pull the stickers out of the girl's skin and off her shirt.

I kept telling her how brave she was and I gave her a Band-Aid for her hand, and a tissue to hold to give her something to do while her mom was pulling stickers with the other bandage. I hope she's okay now. She was starting to welt up, but had stopped crying, when I left them to walk out on their own. The girl had a little bike with training wheels, and there was an older sister, about 12, managing three dogs on leashes, one of which was really worried about the crying baby, and mom, trying to hold it together herself, I guess, after watching her baby crash hard off the paved path and into a psuedo-cactus bush. I don't know what they're called, but they're downright prehistoric-looking sticker bushes with some kind of toxin in the prickers, from what I saw on that baby's legs and arms. Sheesh.

I need to get some witch hazel pads for the first-aid kit.

Roxy