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2019 Summer biking goals

contesstant

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
@contesstant I hear you. Our trails here on Ascutney opened last weekend and I thought I was in fair shape, having done a lot of long road climbs. I was NOT ready. Ascutney is steep, and though the trails are well-built with excellent switchbacks, it's still long, gradual climbing interspersed with short, punchy climbing over obstacles. A great high-intensity workout, for sure, though!

You'd love some of our trails: our Trail Boss has an affinity for putting small jumps wherever he can, just for fun. Once on a long descent, he said "follow me" and showed me every little place to catch air the whole way down. Nothing big, just cool little features to pop off. Sometimes I'll ride a trail I know very well only to discover that he's put in a fun little mini-tabletop out of the blue. Definitely makes the climbing worthwhile!
Yes, sounds just like our trails, including the over obstacles part, just when your legs are turning to goo and the lungs are screaming!
 

just jane

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Gravel bikes seem to be the new “thing.” They seem super versatile. My commuter could probably double as a gravel bike. It’s got a bit wider, knobbier tires than a road bike and it’s so stable. It’s heavy though - steel frame. But I LURVES it. (It’s a Salsa Vaya - marketed as a touring bike.)
 

SallyCat

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
Gravel bikes seem to be the new “thing.” They seem super versatile. My commuter could probably double as a gravel bike. It’s got a bit wider, knobbier tires than a road bike and it’s so stable. It’s heavy though - steel frame. But I LURVES it. (It’s a Salsa Vaya - marketed as a touring bike.)

It will be interesting to see where the "gravel bike" category ends up in two or three years.

I rode dirt/gravel roads this spring on a 29er mountain bike with 2.4 Maxxis Ardent tires. The bike lets me steepen the geometry and lock out the suspension, and I enjoyed it. I actually softened the suspension partway for some of less-climby parts of the ride, which was a nice luxury. My max distance was 15 miles, though (with about 1700 ft. of elevation gain). I keep hemming and hawing about whether a drop-bar bike with more gearing would be more comfortable for longer rides. I know it would be more efficient, but honestly I'm only out on gravel to get in shape for singletrack, so I'm not sure I care enough about efficiency to make the investment. I do care about comfort, though...
 

Little Lightning

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
So I had a bout of momentary insanity a couple of weeks ago, and signed up for the Triple Bypass. I’m not sure what I was thinking! I’ve never had any interest in doing it, but I was all, well, I’ve done Juniper Pass several times, I usually ride it at least a couple of times each summer, and I’ve ridden Loveland Pass before and I hated it, but that was from the other side and riding from Loveland is probably easier, and Vail is the easiest of the three - it’ll only be hard because it’s the last one. So. 120 miles. 10,000 ft of climbing. I haven’t ridden a century (my one and only to date) in a decade. It’s July 13. :rotf:

Anyone else hatching grand summer biking plans - ill-advised or otherwise?
The 10 mile Rec Path through Officers Gulch is open!
https://www.summitcountyco.gov/civi...1AnfEW1xmQYaVjaK-xAxVlm_nx56_vv08IyqpKT8-9elc
 

contesstant

Ski Diva Extraordinaire

just jane

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
That’s amazing, geargrrl! Good for him! Weather was ROUGH this weekend.

Luckily I had yesterday off so I could postpone my training ride a couple of days and yesterday was gorgeous. I entered the regret stage of training a couple of weeks ago, and am still there, accompanied by the the “freak out” stage as of this weekend. Now that I’m three weeks out I’m like OMG have I trained enough can I do this what if I drop out .... stupid monkey mind stuff.

Here’s what I’ve got: since I signed up for this stupid thing 15 weeks ago, I’ve ridden 697 training miles in 14 training rides. I have 6 rides over 60 miles, and one (hopefully two after next weekend) over 80 miles. I have 3 rides with over 5,000 ft elevation gain, and two more over 7,000 ft.

The ride is 120 miles, just under 11,000 ft. I really hope I trained enough. It’s too late now to ramp up. I just want to finish this thing.
 

Little Lightning

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
That’s amazing, geargrrl! Good for him! Weather was ROUGH this weekend.

Luckily I had yesterday off so I could postpone my training ride a couple of days and yesterday was gorgeous. I entered the regret stage of training a couple of weeks ago, and am still there, accompanied by the the “freak out” stage as of this weekend. Now that I’m three weeks out I’m like OMG have I trained enough can I do this what if I drop out .... stupid monkey mind stuff.

Here’s what I’ve got: since I signed up for this stupid thing 15 weeks ago, I’ve ridden 697 training miles in 14 training rides. I have 6 rides over 60 miles, and one (hopefully two after next weekend) over 80 miles. I have 3 rides with over 5,000 ft elevation gain, and two more over 7,000 ft.

The ride is 120 miles, just under 11,000 ft. I really hope I trained enough. It’s too late now to ramp up. I just want to finish this thing.
Wow, you're doing well with the weather we've had. I completed my Illinois tour 2 weeks ago with a total of 237 miles over 5 days. Pretty easy ride except for 20-30 mph cross winds on a couple of days. I had about 80 miles of riding prior to the tour.

We rode around Green Mountain Reservoir yesterday and rode the 10 mile rec path through Officers Gulch from Frisco to Copper today. The avalanche damage is amazing. I've never seen anything like that.
 

Tvan

Angel Diva
We did a flat 20 miler today on the Wassaic rail trial. In 89 degree weather. It was fun and my longest continuous ride ever. Usually we take a break at the 10 mile point, but today we kept on moving. It was actually cooler in motion than it was standing still.
 

geargrrl

Angel Diva
Update. As of last night my hub had 176 miles to go to finish the Tour Divide Race. His goal was 2731 miles in 25 days; this makes 27. Not bad for an old guy (60) who has never raced before. My kid in Phoenix is watching his dot carefully and will retrieve him and all his gear. Tomorrow afternoon/evening I suspect. Other that watching his tracker, there are many days where we no contact.
 

just jane

Ski Diva Extraordinaire
@Little Lightning , we really lucked out on weather for training, especially given what a cold wet spring it was. We managed to get out in relatively good weather almost every weekend. I didn’t ride as much during the week as I would have liked through a lot of the training, so I’m hoping that doing super-ambitious weekend rides will be good. We did the 2nd of two 85-milers on Jun 29 with over 9,000 ft of climbing.

I did a pretty easy 45 mile, 2,000 ft elevation gain ride this past Saturday for my “taper.” This coming Saturday is it! I am so ready to be done with this thing.
 

geargrrl

Angel Diva
It will be interesting to see where the "gravel bike" category ends up in two or three years.

I rode dirt/gravel roads this spring on a 29er mountain bike with 2.4 Maxxis Ardent tires. The bike lets me steepen the geometry and lock out the suspension, and I enjoyed it. I actually softened the suspension partway for some of less-climby parts of the ride, which was a nice luxury. My max distance was 15 miles, though (with about 1700 ft. of elevation gain). I keep hemming and hawing about whether a drop-bar bike with more gearing would be more comfortable for longer rides. I know it would be more efficient, but honestly I'm only out on gravel to get in shape for singletrack, so I'm not sure I care enough about efficiency to make the investment. I do care about comfort, though...

Here's my take on it. Yes, they are the "new thing". My shop guys call them road bikes for mountain bikers. They've take the cross bike concept and tweaked the geometry for all day, long distance riding instead of the couple of hours of a cross race. PLus there is a lot of built in ride dampening features.

You can tweak the gearing for your intended surface and you can have a lot more tire options. When I ride mine on the road, it's so much more stable and "damped" than my skittery road bike. I can put a road surface or rough surface tire on it. Touring bikes have been around for a long time but I look at this: my friend has a Surly LH Trucker that weight almost 50 lbs without gear. WTF? She only weighs 130. My gravel tourer weighs less than half that.
 

geargrrl

Angel Diva
How are you enjoying the new bike, @geargrrl - is it love?
So far.... my main gravel buddy got it in his head to ride from Banff to MX on HIS gravel bike.... I took my road bike out yesterday and was wishing I was on it. I wasn't sure how the gearing would match my friend's road bike gearing.
 

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