August 3 2003
Today is Sunday. On Saturday, Kevin and I went on a long, challenging ride. At the end of this month, we will be taking our second cycling vacation out west. So we need to do a lot of hill work to get ready. Last year we went to Glacier National Park in Montana and had a great time. Six days of riding in the Rocky Mountains in Montana and in Canada. We had a great time and the touring company Timberline Tours did a terrific job in finding accomodations (National Park Lodges), great food, and spectacular scenery. This year we have decided to go to the south west - Albuquerque to Denver - between 500-600 miles. More about that later. Anyway, to get ready for the ride, we have been trying to get in some challenging hill work. Yesterday's ride was probably the most challenging we have done. We started at Brighton Dam in Maryland. The hills begin almost immediately with a climb up from the dam. No real time to warm up but the day is muggy and warm so sweating begins right away.
If you are looking for a lot of hills then this is a great ride to try. Kevin has put together several variants of this ride together from county maps and from a ride put together by DC AIDS Riders who have posted their cue sheets online. The climbs on this ride are fairly short (sometimes they sure don't feel that way) but they can get pretty steep - if you need to work on shifting gears and rings this will help. We have been doing this ride for about six weeks and I think my shifting has definitely improved. I have found that I can anticipate which gear to shift into better because of the hill work we have been doing. I also believe that I am a stronger rider as the result of hill work. Yeah it is hard but it is also kind of enjoyable when you make it to the top of a particularly difficult hill. It is also sweet when you shift correctly and just power up the hill.
One hill that we did yesterday was on Buffalo road - boy was that a hill - it just seemed to go on forever and ever. In fact, this ride seemed to go on - the roads on the cue sheet never seemed to get any shorter. I sure was glad that I had a tripple.
The one thing that lacks on this ride is convenient convenience stores. Our first stop on the way, about 25 miles is a small store on Obrecht road. They have lime gatorade and water but if you need to use the facilities - forget it - no public bathrooms. We bottle up here but then there is nothing until we are about 10 miles away from the end of the ride. By the time we made it to this stop we were both out of water and very low on gatorade. We were both pretty tired and feeling the effects of dehydration. I am amazed at how badly I was feeling and wonder how Lance Armstrong could ride the first time trial as fast as he did and be dehydrated. Kevin suggested and I think we will do this next time is to have our camelbacks with us. That way we will have enough water for the entire ride and not have to worry.
The last ten miles were much better and we even made up some of the time we had lost. The entire ride was somewhere between 81-85 miles. Based on Kevin's computer, our average speed was about 17.1 miles which given all of the hills, is not too bad.
Today, we will be doing a recovery ride from the house - usually a 20 mile ride that will get all of the kinks out of the system.
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