Sunday, January 9, 2011

New Years Road Ride

So I am about a week late posting this, but at any rate, Alex let me borrow his TREK road bike, a 1994 2200 Carbon/Aluminum with Campagnello components. To say this bike is light is an understatement - my scale says its about 17lbs. Alex lent me the bike so I could decide if I could adjust to riding a road bike, having ridden only mountain bikes before. This also gave me the opportunity to get some miles in riding with clipless pedals (these have cleats that attach your shoe to the pedal). My goals for today were to ride from Dunedin (just south of Main Street) to the end of the bridge over Bay Pines causeway.

I loaded up the bike, camelbak, and put some gatorade in the frame bottle. The weather was pretty steller today except for the 15mph wind out of the south (which was due to a cold front that was to come through later that night). I stretched out a bit in the parking lot, downed a Gatorade G1 and clipped in. I headed south on the Pinellas trail, adjusting to using the brakes and shifters, and trying to remember to unclip before I stop. The headwind/crosswind absolutely sucked, I couldn't beat 20mph even pedaling hard in top gear. This left me wondering if I was missing something, since Alex and his dad mentioned being able to sprint to nearly 30mph and ride at or near 20 mph.

While riding I remember why I like riding the Pinellas trail so much - rarely having to worry about cars, going over the bars on some drop or wrecking out in the middle of nowhere. I put on some tunes and just blast down the trail.

The trail:
After having ridden the norther section quite a bit, I did long to ride the southern end. I haven't ridden the section from 38th Ave North past Seminole Blvd since I was about 23, and have never ridden the section between Seminole Blvd and the south end of Clearwater. That being said, the section that winds through downtown Clearwater had been under construction for quite some time, but I was happy to find that it was finally completed when I rolled through. One thing you won't find a lot of north of Dunedin is overpasses - there is only one just north of Curlew. It's an entirely different story south of Clearwater. There are overpasses at East Bay, Ulmerton, 113th, Park Blvd, Seminole Blvd and several more south of Park Street. This makes for some fun times as some of the grades you must climb are a bit steep, and the gear set on this bike aren't nearly as low as that you find on the mountain bike (and thankfully so...) so you really need to be moving your feet to get up, with the upshot of hitting the gears hard on the way down, resulting in 25-30mph downhill blasts (even when the wind is blowing pretty solidly)...

There really wasn't much traffic this day, probably because it was January 1st. That being said when I got down to the St. Pete side, I did see an uptick in the number of people out and about.

The Midpoint:
I finally reached my goal which was just a bit more than 15 miles down from where I started. I was thankful to take a break, as the wind was just crazy. I took some pictures and found I had to wedge my helmet under the front wheel to keep the wind from blowing it backwards down the trail. I rested my feet and downed a G1, and lamented that I forgot an additional food source. You really do need energy when you ride like this.



The ride back:

Ok, so I was worried I just didn't have the legs to see 25+ on this bike, and I was happy that as soon as I was pedalling with the wind to my back, that I could with effort reach those speeds. My personal best according to the bike computer was about 31.4mph (GPS says it was about 25.92mph so perhaps I just didnt pedal that fast for long enough). At any rate, I started to run out of gas around mile 26 (you can see my speed drop for a bit before I got my second wind).

Overall I was very happy with this ride, and have decided that instead of buying a new mountain bike, I am going to be looking at a new road bike hopefully after taxes are done for 2010.

Ride Stats and Maps:
Started: Jan 1, 2011 9:09:17 AM
Ride Time: 2:03:54
Stopped Time: 16:40
Distance: 30.84 miles
Average: 14.93 miles/h
Fastest Speed: 25.92 miles/h
Fastest Speed according to bike computer: 30.3 mph
Climb: 241 feet
Calories: 1722
Calories according to HRM: 2116
Max Heart Rate: 199bpm
Average Heart Rate: 168bpm


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