Quote Originally Posted by ny biker View Post
I'm supposed to go out for a ride tonight. The weather is beautiful. Yet I feel so lazy!

I'm working from home so to change things up I think I will ride around my neighborhood, going in circles up and down the hills. Hopefully there won't be much traffic.

I posted a long hilly ride on my club schedule for Saturday so of course now they say it will rain. But scattered light rain -- maybe we can still get some miles in. The route I planned includes 2 short cuts.

Looking ahead to the following weekend's charity ride -- the metric route is just as hilly as the one I chose not to do last weekend (and shares some of the same roads). I need to log some miles!
See, posting here is making a commitment. I hauled my butt out there and rode 20.7 miles without ever leaving my neighborhood. There's a community center at the top of a hill on the other side of the 'hood, with roads that go in a circle down the hill and back up again. So I rode over there for a warm up, then did 10 clockwise hill repeats, a brief spin around some flat roads for a break, then 10 hill repeats counter-clockwise, or maybe it was 11, I lost count. Then I rode back over to my side of the 'hood, and for one last effort I kept going past my house down the hill to the dead end and came back up again. As I turned around at the bottom there was a man standing on his front porch whistling "Pennies from Heaven." Estimated total elevation gain was about 1500 feet. My quads are feeling it. Mission accomplished!!

Riding around my neighborhood is not as nice as it used to be. Traffic is not too heavy but it's constant and most people either have no patience or are just clueless. The main through streets have bike lanes but there are many parked cars so the risk of being doored is also constant. And the squirrels are especially stupid around here, running in front of you and then stopping like they want to get run over. But tonight things went well. Perhaps we finally have enough cyclists in this area that people are more accustomed to sharing the roads. And I guess the squirrels were napping...