What a spectacular
day it was! I hope you all
managed to get out and enjoy some part of yesterday on a bike. You lived through it too. You know, mid-August days do not come
any better.
I know there were a lot of events and races going on, here
and there, but I saw very few cyclists out. For that matter, once the usual church dismissal flurry was
past, there wasn’t much traffic out either. Perhaps they were all at the mall? School starts today, and this weekend past was one of those tax holiday things.
A note on School
starting: Be advised! Traffic patterns have just changed, and
done so dramatically. Leave a
little earlier, and do be extra alert.
There will be a lot more drivers on the road, and many of them will be quite distracted.
Tonight’s the Night! Yup, it’s time to go out and ride at
night again. Sure, we’re
celebrating Mid-Summer just a wee bit late, but that couldn’t be helped.
It will be a moonless night, so make sure your lights are in
good order and well charged.
We’ll start riding at 7:30 P.M. Local sunset is 8:26 P.M., and civil twilight ends at
8:52. We expect to be out a bit
more than three hours, so it will get
dark.
Gaps Ride:
Seems like every time I do one of these, I get some of the
same anxiety driven questions.
They all boil down to about two cogent ones.
Can I do this?
And…
Should I do this?
It’s reasonable.
Mountains are BIG and
intimidating. But if your fitness
is up to it, they are quite do-able.
It takes time, patience, and
the willingness to learn a bit on the
way up and down.
I’ve often said it, and I will repeat it here and now: “Riders
who ride and train in our area are prepared to ride anywhere!”
We do not have the sustained climbs one encounters in the
mountains, but we do have plenty of
climbing. The difference is that
on a sustained climb, you just take it easier from the start, and it goes on
longer.
Montain descending
is a bit different, but mostly it boils down to this:
Do NOT “ride” the
brakes! Let your speed build, and
then “pulse brake” briskly before turns.
It’s okay to go down slower than the experts.
Food for thought ~
If you have done one of our Audax 200K rides,
then you have, in one day, ridden 125 miles, and climbed 2546 feet. The Original Triple Gap Route does about twice the climbing, but is
only 2/5 the distance. If you’ve
done the one, you most certainly can
do the other. Put another way,
distance is harder that elevation.
(Honest, it is!)
Another way to look at it is by actual climbing
distance. There isn’t much up in
that part of the world that is flat.
So it’s not a 53 mile
climb. It’s really about 26 miles
of climbing, interspersed with 26 miles of descending. That’s a good deal!
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