It was a cool early spring day. The route spent a lot of time climbing up and down ridges, where the very first signs of spring were just appearing. There was 9000 feet of climb. There were a lot of short steep climbs. My Garmin Training Center chart shows 16 climbs over 10%, and 1 over 15%.
I rode the T-Bone.
You will note there are no other cyclists in this picture. That's because they all left 20 minutes ago. I thought that I'd just drive from home, since Urbana is not that far away instead of driving out the night before and sleeping in Debra's Element. Well, I got up at 5:30, and due to my dysfunctional nature in the morning, here I am all alone at 7:20.
I have the T-Bone set up as my flat-land go-fast bike. It has new Q-Rings, and an 11-26 10 speed cassette. This gives me a low gear of only 28 gear inches. I usually ride the Cobrabike on brevets, which has 90 speeds and a low gear of 16 gear inches. (That's more like it.) But I got the T-Bone up Gun Road in its current setup, so I figured this would be a good experiment to see just how hard it would be.
I managed. It was pretty hard at the end, and my knees were pretty stiff today. On the other hand, I was very fast on this ride. I think the T-Bone might be a bit faster than the Cobrabike, although I'm not sure why that is.
Here's the first control, in Union Bridge. The ridge in the background is the Catoctin Mountains, which is the big, big climb of the day.
Here is Smithville, on the other side of the Catoctins. I made myself wraps of corned beef and swiss cheese, and ate one about every 90 minutes to two hours. I sipped Cytomax continuously. This worked very well, although I did feel a bit jagged towards the end.
Here's the next control at the KOA outside of Williamsport. Time for another wrap.
Gapland. It's always great to see this. That's because it's payback time. This was my last snack stop.
Here's the map.
Here's the MotionBased page. It ends a mile short because the battery died on the GPS.
4 comments:
Ah, the war corespondents memorial, in Gathland State Park. Been there two times.
Nice work.
Man, the route went right past my house. Someday I'm going to have to join DCRAND. Maybe someday when i can ride more than 5 consecutive miles.
Nice ride. I'll have to live vicariously through rides like this until the snow decides enough is enough around here.
You've got a sweet quiver of bikes to choose from.
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