Windy Metric
Just a couple more miles today would have made 70. Ah well, it's still my longest ride of the year by about 30 miles. Good thing it was all flat. Come to think of it, while the total climbing probably amounted to less than 100 feet, the wind made it feel as if we started at the top of a mountain, rode to the bottom, and then turned around and rode back up.
Windy. Ride time wind varied from 5-10 mph on the way out and 10-15 mph on the way home. Riding in the wind, regardless of which way you're going, always hurts. A tailwind on the flats hurts because high speeds are highly motivating. Where else can an old guy like me cruise along in the high 20's? That's what the pro peleton must feel like, short of all the foreign language conversations going on. A headwind... well a headwind hurts even at tempo speeds.
And of course we had the headwind on the way home. The wind seemed to always be about 20-30° off from directly ahead. The ride stats look like this:
Out Back Normalized Power 224 221 Average Power 202 205 TSS 110 139 Wind speed 5-10 10-15 Average Speed 21.8 16.8
Not bad as far as keeping the load fairly constant.
Wattage wise, a decent ride for me. Other wise, a great group of guys to ride and share some laughs with. I wish I hadn't left my camera in the car. I wanted to get some shots of them out on the road. I also missed some really nice fall colors up on the bluffs by the river. Next time. There's always next time.
May be not....
unless you meant next year when you said, "next time".
The way the temps are shooting up and down around here, I am not sure if the colors will be around long. I could be wrong, but I think I missed the peak out at Binder. There were some awesome colors out there today, but they were on the ground!
I saw a few riders wearing full DH gear sporting some big-hit bikes as I was unloading to ride. In my haste to get out on the trails before they made it to the tech descents, I failed to take my camera along...so I was unable to take any fall-color pictures.
Could get some today
I think I'll head out to Babler today for a recovery ride and snap a few. It won't be the same kind of epic as yesterday and it won't be with the same great bunch of guys but the colors should be every bit as nice.
If you can call it nice. We still have lots of green here. I think green will largely turn straight to brown. A few have nice colors. Hopefully they'll hold until a little later today.
Some left!
Took the boys out to Binder to play in the "goose park" and found some nice colors.
The photo is not very saturated (since it was my camera), but you get the point.
