Magnificent or Mundane May Rides!

[TrekDianna]

I commuted twice last week on the new Salsa Vaya 3 and I love it. I took it out today on a 15 mile ride (had to get something in before the downpour and chores took over the rest of the day.) I am happy with it. it's actually pretty zippy for the weight.

[emily_in_nc]

Today we did two rides. First was just up to the farmer's market before breakfast -- < 7 miles round trip. After a big pancake breakfast back at the ranch, we did a long road ride. It was finally shorts and SS jersey weather, and for the first time this spring, I think, there was hardly ANY wind. Beautiful day! I got in 47.8 miles on that ride. And just to show that eastern KS is not flat, here's a sign we saw after climbing one of the monster hills just west of the KC area...

Attachment 17075

Hope everyone is having a nice Saturday! I'm thinking a recovery ride tomorrow will be in order...trying to think of a flatter route to do!

[colorisnt]

I have friends that run in KC all the time and my "in laws" run there quite a bit. They have all said "NOT FLAT". It's like here. Everyone thinks MO is flat but CoMo is anything but. Jeff is worse!

We rode about 41 and some miles today! Yay for us. I got injured in softball last night. I took a ball to the jaw and am BRUISED. Thankfully it's hide-able or else everyone would think my mild-mannered SO was abusing me. I was bleeding yesterday night but I still played and got a run! Yay! I'm hopeless but I hit well last night. We decided to get a big breakfast and TRY to ride. What a beautiful day! We got to our destination, ate a corndog, and then rode back. Tried to stop at the new microbrewery on the way home but it was nothing but frat boys. So annoying and they were taking tables without using them which is just stupid behavior. We turned home and I ended up with a Lagunitas limited release Cappuccinno Stout. So fun. We paced slow today (between 13 and 14) on purpose because the trail was BUSY and I was injured.

I was glad I sucked it up and did it, though, because I had an awesome ride.

[Boudicca]

Got very wet, even on a short ride. It wasn't raining when we started, and then it drizzled, and then it really rained. Practice for tomorrow's group ride, perhaps. I am taking the Friday, because it's the only bike I've got with fenders. I figure the extra workout won't do me any harm, and it has more gears than the other bikes anyway.

I'll actually be riding the same route as a few weeks back, so I'm curious whether there is a difference in the speed between the two bikes.

[Crankin]

My ride today was crazy. This was for leaders, and there were supposed to be 2 rides, a 20 and 30 mile ride. There were only 10 people, so we set out to do 26. It was lightly raining when we left, had my Showers Pass jacket on. We stopped, so we could take jackets off, etc. and when I unzipped my jacket, the zipper pull disappeared. I mean it's gone. Since the zipper on one of the pit zips is stuck in open, this jacket is going in the trash. It will cost more to fix it than to get a new one on a discount site. Boo. There was a mix of abilities, but it was really nice out and pleasant, until halfway, when right when we went up the only bigger hill of the ride, one guy said he was struggling, recovering from bronchitis. The leader is a super experienced guy, but he has a bad sense of direction, even with a gps... he missed 2 turns before this. Anyway, I told him a slightly shorter, flatter way to get back to his own house, and I started leading. I turned off of a main road to take a short cut to another main road, and somehow he missed us. Anyway, we all got back, in a couple of different groups, but I ended up a little more sweaty than I planned.
The food was good at the party afterwards. DH joined me for the dinner, as he had to stay home to await our new washer and dryer. I think it was about 25 miles... I took the gps off the course and I pressed so many things on that screen, I don't even know what I did.

[azfiddle]

Today's ride started with a discussion about training and nutrition by a pro rider for Team Cloud who is also a coach for several of our team members. Then we had drills with cones and water bottles to practice bike handling skills and a some pace line practice. Our group seemed woefully undisciplined today on the paceline, which seemed quite surprising as there are so many of us who are experienced at riding in pacelines. Some of the ladies went on up Mt. Lemmon but I had to turn back early to get home for the Tucson Folk Festival this afternoon. So it was only about 19 miles. Maybe tomorrow will be ride on the mountain.

The coach had good suggestions and offered to preview some of the future rides and point out some areas where we might want to practice group skills for the future.

[ny biker]

I had a great ride today. It was a big multi-class club ride with three distances to choose from, and I lead the B group on the metric route. Except I rode sweep at the low end of the B pace while most everyone else was a high-B rider. And I was delayed leaving two of the rest stops (trying to get my wool Kneekers off over my bike shoes at one and needing eye drops for my pollen-irritated contact lenses at another). So most of my group were too far up the road for me to see for most of the ride, and I rode alone for some of it. But the weather was near perfect and we had fun. There were 23 of us in all -- too many for one person to manage, but there were enough experienced ride leaders in the group to help make sure everyone rode without any major incidents.

I took a couple of short-cuts so I ended up riding 58 miles rather than 62. It was still my longest ride of the year so far. My legs were a bit tired mid-way through the ride but at the end they actually felt pretty good. And I averaged 14.2 mph, which is faster than most of the rides I've done lately.

With our club, you earn a ride leader's jersey if you lead at least six rides in a year. Today was my first day wearing the jersey that I earned last year. It's a nice Louis Garneau jersey.

[rebeccaC]

Rode over the Santa Monica Mountains to Simi Valley. The hardest part of the ride was Black Canyon Rd leaving Chatsworth and Box Canyon Rd back into Chatsworth. Black Canyon was just a brutal climb for me. Even the descent was difficult. It was so hard that Box Canyon seemed like a recovery ride. I stopped for stretching, fluids and calling to make a massage appointment at the top of Black Canyon. It got into the 90’s by early afternoon and that made me happy we weren’t on either of those canyon roads then and on the descent off the SM mountains to Pacific Coast Highway.

82 miles.

[Crankin]

Meh, just went to meet friends for a nice hilly ride and it's raining. It wasn't supposed to start until much later. It's also windy and not so warm out. We turned around. There might be a window to do a short ride in a bit, but right now, I am drinking more coffee.

[marni]

Tusdays ride out around Sealy, Tx ( town of mattress fame) was 50 miles of country roads and rollers. It was basically pleasant for the first 30 miles as we had a tail and side wind. The return 20 miles were a misery 15 mph headwinds with gusts up to 40. Fortunately there were five of us and the paceline helped and the wind and low humidity (drought conditions already) kept the temperatures doable.

Yesterdays 50 miles on the local roads was much more doable, a good thing since I was riding on my own. Breezes were mostly side and quartering and only at about 10 mph. Glad I got off the road early though because they were back to 20-25 miles with heavier gusts.

I have a gut feeling this summer is going to be a repeat of the summer two years ago, drought, high humidity, lots of wind. Sigh....

[Dragonfly5]

Managed to get in a 13.5 mile ride today before we took my mother in-law out to lunch today. The weather was perfect! Wind was a little gusty but I kept telling myself that it was "resistance training" lol. Emily, I have a four day weekend coming up and right now the extended forecast is calling for rain on every single one of them. I will GLADLY send that out to you!