Post Snow and Bailout Gears

Looped around Denver yesterday.

Once again, made me realize how lucky I am to live in a community that provides the sort of bike access that Denver does. Even though we got a couple of feet of snow last week in a couple different storms, the bike path was pretty busy. Amazing how well used that recreation infrastructure is.

Since the wind was supposed to turn around to the north, I didn't want to take the ride down toward the Springs and have to fight a north wind coming home. But as it turned out, it didn't turn until very late, so I could have done that ride. I had wanted to shy away from the bike path, because I expected there to be snow and ice at the edge of a lot of the underpasses like last week. But it was a bonus that there were very few spots with snow and ice.

Lunch at Confluence Park was just incredible really. Sunny and warm, lots of people watching, it was all I could do to get back on the bike and ride the last 40 miles home.

I've now done 2 rides on the new 7900 stuff. I have to say that the gearing with the compact and the 11-28 seems about ideal for me. I won't know until I start climbing about the climbing gears, but I've got to believe that I'll be able to hold that 28 tooth bailout gear in my pocket for that little extra sense of security on the long and steep ones - probably rarely use it but enjoy it just for the sense of security that it gives me. Funny how that works - when you've got that bailout gear in the back of your mind, it seems to help you exert even more and keep the effort and pace up even higher - knowing that if you really blew up, you could drop down into that tiny little thing and recover.

The Season's First Long Ride

Last week I got 2 days of commuting in. That's about 45 miles RT on each of those days. While that's an OK day total, it's not breaking the hind-end into many hours on the bike. I consider 4 hours sort of a milestone to get across to call it a long ride - one that is callousing up the sit-bones. I'm hoping to keep up something like that pace of commuting for the next many months - twice a week as an average.

But the real work of long base miles has to happen on the weekends, and this weekend I got my first longer ride in. Just shy of 70 miles takes me on a loop around Denver, from Parker to Chatfield, then downtown, and back along Cherry Creek to Parker. My best time for that loop is a little under 3.5 hours - averaging a little over 20 mph. That's in a state of good fitness for me.

Saturday, for this ride, I needed to wait until about 10 to start, to let the temp get up to 40. That way, I can do the ride with a ls jersey and a windbreaker. Unfortunately, this meant that my timing of the loop, and the timing of the wind shifts during the day, would have me facing the wind for most of the ride. And in fact, this is exactly what happened.

That's OK though - I enjoyed the extra workout. And the big bonus for me was meeting my daughter downtown and having a nice lunch with her. It was a beautiful day. Total elapsed time was a little over 6 hours. Average speed 13.6 MPH. The new computer is nice, as it let me see that the total climbing for this ride is just under 2000'. I have always assumed that it was half that, since I start at 6000', then fall to about 5000', then climb back up. Just goes to show that the little ups and downs of a ride that feels pretty flat can add up more than you think.

Now, the forecast for this week sounds pretty iffy - I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Still working on coming up with a name for the big ride this summer.

Dave And Neil's Epic Ride (DANER?)