I made a monthly title, given the fact that a lot of us don't ride as much at this time of year.
So, yesterday I went on a ride to celebrate my 60th birthday, which is tomorrow. I had looked up several metric possibilities on Ride With GPS. Rides that were local and did not have 4K feet of climbing, since I am trying to rehab my spine. I found a couple that had 2-2,5000 ft. of climbing.
DH proceeded to "design" his own ride to surprise me. I hate surprises while riding. He said it would go through a lot of neighborhoods, in towns we rarely ride in.
We started off heading to Concord Center in a different way, looped through a neighborhood, then through the center, through another neighborhood, where at mile 5.5, we stopped to shed clothing. It was apparent I needed to take off my base layer. We finally crossed RT 2, and stopped at Verrill Farm, where I did a quick change in the bathroom. My pockets and smaller seat bag were stuffed with knee warmers, base layer, cap, long fingered gloves. I kept the arm warmers and vest on, but did push down the arm warmers for about half of the ride. So, on into the lovely town of Lincoln. It was fine until we turned onto an unpaved street. Great. Thanfully, I put 25s on my Kuota about 2 months ago, so while it wasn't awful, I had to slow and I was yelling at DH (I had warned him not to take me down dirt roads). It was short, hilly, but hard packed. OK, more familiar roads until we got on another, long dirt road. A car came by and scared the crap out of me while I was trying to concentrate. When that was done, we headed into Wayland and Weston. We climbed one hill that I had been on before, and then headed into some neighborhoods that had some very good climbs. I noticed that all of these roads had names like "country road." It seemed like we circled around and on Rt. 20 a few times, and then we were in Framingham. We were heading south by now and I knew we were in kind of a sketchy area. More, because people driving here probably don't ever see cyclists, and it's a bit industrial. After a little bit of a screaming match about where to stop to eat, we stopped at a pizza place in a strip mall. DH convinced them to let him use the bathroom, as it said "no restrooms." We ordered a chicken wrap to split, that was huge. The chicken was kind of fried and there was bacon in there, but I really needed the salt. I also gulped half a Gatorade. We had ridden about 35 miles at this point and I was starting to fade. The owner of the place was mean and our sandwich came after several other people who came in after us got their pizzas. Anti-cyclist vibe , definitely.
Off we went. We quickly got into a more rural/suburban part of Framingham, involving some heavily trafficked intersections and cars that clearly had clueless drivers. All of a sudden, we were in Southboro, which I thought was only on the other side of a major highway. We started climbing and climbing, but the scenery was great. DH said he felt like he was in a familiar place, and he was. We passed his boss's house... about 6,000 square feet of it. The climb was long, and then we kind of turned and headed into Marlborough. OK, I knew we were on the way back now. But... we had to ride down a very busy 2 lane portion of Rt. 20. The thing is, I have been on other, delightful roads around here that ended up to the point where we needed to turn. Oh well, after about 3 miles of this, we turned onto the Wayside Inn Rd. and voila, back in a place where I felt comfortable. We were at mile 45 and there were no surprises after this. Passed the Grist Mill, the little Red Schoolhouse of "Mary Had a Little Lamb," fame, and several other places from my childhood. I got a burst of energy, I just wanted to get home! We stopped to put our red blinkies on, as it was cloudy and about 3:30. Our cruise in through Sudbury and west Concord was uneventful and even the traffic in Concord center seemed less crazy than in past weekends. We got home at around 4:15 and collapsed!
61.06 miles, at a slow speed, but it ended up having 3K feet of climbing. The weather was fantastic, around 65, no wind.
I am resting today.