Today was billed as an “urban cycling sampler”. I liked the idea – after a fair bit of climbing yesterday I was all for a nice flat ride. But just because it’s flat doesn’t mean that it has to be easy. Today was a speed day and the numbers back it up. A 14.5mph average!
I woke up an hour late (8am instead of 7am), so I was rushed going out the door. I really hate that. Especially since when that happens I tend to screw something up, which is how the kitties escaped that one time. But today I took care to make sure I didn’t do anything stupid like that today. And I also made sure I remembered locking the door so that I didn’t have to go back and check it. I did end up getting away about 10 minutes later than I wanted to at, leaving at around 9:10am.
The ride to Fremont and Mary was pretty simple. I don’t quite like the stretch of Mary between Central and El Camino. It’s listed as a “bike route” but it’s not very comfortable. I think I see why Google Maps wanted to send me a different route. I felt a bit under pressure to get there on time…and I pulled in to the parking lot at exactly 9:29am. That works out well. For now I think I’ll ride there – the extra 6 miles didn’t hurt.
Now Terri, who plans the rides, seems to REALLY like to make me ride back home at the start. This time it was EXACTLY the route I take home, going right by Whisman and Gladys (which is how I go home). Then she made me go to work…as in riding right by Yahoo!. Then around to Caribbean (which I hadn’t been on before on a bike). After that it was a bike trail I hadn’t been on before and a lot of urban riding that isn’t really worth describing in detail. It was a good route, but I couldn’t tell you where we went. I just did what the Garmin told me.
I will talk about the pace, however. I made sure to leave with the front group, and my hope was to stick with them until the rest stop at least – and I pretty much did that. But I was spent. I left it all on the road. After the rest break I was much slower. However, my resulting pace being at 14.5mph over 40 miles – I’ll take that.