Labor Day Weekend Rides

[lauraelmore1033]

We've been learning to ride our new tandem, so our rides have been pretty easy trail rides of increasing length. Sunday we parked in lowell with the aim of seeing how fast we could ride the river road into Snohomish and then continued on to the end of the centenial trail in Arlington and back. It was such a beautiful sunny day and there were lots of antiquers out and about in snohomish and a lot of happy families and youth groups out on the trail. This was a terrifying prospect on our earlier outings, with all the stopping and starting and shakey steering maneuvers, but we're getting a lot more comfortable on the tandem and it was pretty fun. We put in almost 50 miles, so I'm feeling a lot more confident about the decision to do the Chuckanut Century on the tandem in a couple of weeks.

[Crankin]

Rode 26 miles, with breakfast in the middle. A route designed to get my miles I needed to make 2K for the year so far. I am way behind my mileage compared to the past 2 years, but I'll definitely be able to do 2500. Not too sure about 3K, though. All the weather reports I've seen say warm fall right up until January 1, then good snow in January and February, which is my idea of perfect ( x-country skiing).

[azfiddle]

Can't quite match Wahine's ride, but Saturday I did 48 miles with over 5000 feet of climbing. My riding group planned to go somewhere between 10 and 14 miles up Mt. Lemmon. After the worst part, one gal and I had enough water and energy to continue to make it up to Palisades, refill the bottles and head down. 3 1/2 hours up and 1 hr 15 min down. I'm pretty slow.

Sunday I went out with a new group - just women, being sponsored by the local Kia dealer. We just went 26 miles, and managed 15 mph.

Monday? Too tired to ride!

[Wahine]

Sounds like there's been a lot of tandem riding going on. Fun!

Salsa - I've never quite understood what fizik is trying to do with their saddles. They all look like torture devices to me.

[Veronica]

Took the mountain bikes out - climbed 1,000 feet in 2.2 miles. My HRM was beeping pretty much the entire time, telling me I was in the red zone.

Explored a little on the descent and took a different route. It was slightly longer and a little more gradual, sweeping sort of descent. The trail was really beat up though, so I'd still rather do the harder climb.

Veronica

[Catrin]

It sounds like all had great rides who were able to get out there and do so! After my lovely ride Saturday morning that was pretty much it for the weekend. Sunday I needed to rest, and Monday I had a quite "laborious" Labor Day special workout with my training group. Probably the hardest workout I've ever had. Period, it was fun! It was drizzling rain anyway, and I don't ride in the rain deliberately so it was the perfect day for it.

Saturday evening I was without power for 7 hours, but as that is only the second time in my adult life that has happened I am NOT complaining. I have lots of candles

[lovelygamer]

I rode near 20 miles this weekend, on two rides. I was recovering from minor surgery last week and not able to ride for a week so it was good to be back on the bike.