The training continues apace.  I met up with Emjay and Doug at the Bike Kitchen around 10 this morning, along with a few other riders who had turned out for their own midmorning ride.  We were dropped after two miles, but we took off on our own ad hoc sort of ride up the American River Parkway trail to Arden, where we cut inland and went past the nice houses in Carmichael, out to Ancil Hoffman Park, and back.

At 33 miles, it wasn’t a terribly long ride, but once we got off the trail we got to experience some little hills – sort of the preview version of the sort of thing I’ll be doing with far more gusto next year.  It’s very clear that what little riding I’ve done up to now has been on flat land, because I really started to feel those hills, and I’m not sure how well I could have handled many more than that little we did.

All in all, though, it wasn’t too bad, and this is what I need to do now to help me conquer all 545 miles next year, including the infamous Quadbuster and the Evil Twins.  And going downhill made me appreciate cycle computers, though.  It’s a lot more fun to know when you’re about to break 40 mph on torn-up California roads…

One thing I  kind of enjoyed, for not necessarily noble reasons, was Doug getting a flat tire.  All told, we were stuck on the side of the road near the 13 mile mark on the Parkway for about 20 minutes while he fixed it, and after that we took a ten minute detour out to Carmichael Cycles to reinflate it fully (there’s only so much you can do with a hand pump, and 120 psi ain’t it). But it was nice, especially after my last training ride, not to have been the guy holding the other riders up.  And to be honest, the thirty minute cool down period wasn’t exactly unwelcome, especially when I got to look out over this beautiful green park.

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Miles/hours this trip:       33/2
Total training miles/hours:  95/7