“Ride #58: Beautiful Day for the Bike”

The weather was so muggy last week that my longest ride was just 34 miles. I just couldn't stand to be out there for any longer! Saturday night the humidity finally broke with some huge rain storms, and the weather on Sunday was as beautiful as it was at the PMC. I had a larger-than-normal lunch of pasta around 12:30, and then at 4:00 I headed out on the bike.

The plan was to do seventy miles, but Corinne was concerned that if anything went wrong I wouldn't be back until after dark, so I cut it back to 60 miles.

I have to be honest... I was afraid that after a week of short rides, my body wouldn't be able to handle a long one again. I was a little slower than I had hoped, but I think it had more to do with the size of my lunch than the length of my rides last week. (Also, I only used two PowerGel packs. Had this been a group ride of any sort, I would have used at least four to keep my energy level up as high as I could.)

Anyway, the route was a nice melding of my most recent training routes and the Misquamicut beach loop: up 117 into Ledyard, back down the Colonel Ledyard Highway, take a shortcut to the top of Pumpkin Hill Road, down Gallup Hill Road, a few more back roads to Wolf Neck Road and then North Stonington Road (201) to Lantern Hill Road to River Road onto Route 1 in Mystic. Route 1 to Westerly, and then 1A (basically) up into Watch Hill. The furthest point of the ride is the far end of Atlantic Avenue on Misquamicut.

Stats: 61.79 miles (99.48 km) in 3h 7' 5" for an average speed of 19.81 mph (31.90 kph).