Today we did our first ride of the season to Bolton Orchards for lunch and back. This is a hilly ride, so good training for France. Usually, it's 50 miles + a little, but because of grooved pavement on a downhill toward the end of the ride, we took a slightly shorter way home, so it ended up being 46 miles and about 2,400 ft. of climbing. We purposely keep it slow on these rides, so we feel good when we get to lunch! The majority of the hard climbing is right before the stop, but there is an awesome downhill to make up for it. After lunch, there is a 4 mile gradual climb, not shaded. It does flatten and go down a few times, but after lunch, it feels hard. DH was really going slowly, and I forced myself to stay behind. Good thing, because after this, there's one more annoying climb, and then a long downhill, when we get back to an area that's more local riding for us. This is where I started feeling like I was losing it, but I ate a Shot Block, which helped right until I got to the climb up my street. It was 81 today and the clouds cooperated and came out for most of the climbing that wasn't shaded. It was quiet out today; not so many cars or riders, and Bolton Farms was quiet, too. I think there's a lot of graduations and end of the school year sports stuff going on.
Yesterday, we did a fast 19 miles just around Concord and Carlisle. It was also my first beer and ice cream day of the season .