Johnston Ridge

QUICK STATS	This Ride	2010 Cumulative
Distance	83.66 miles	2667 miles
Elevation Gain	6513 feet	27.62 miles
Average Moving Speed	13.7 mph	15.0 mph
Dog Bites	0	1

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.

This was the second attempt within a week of one of our favorite rides, the Tour de Blast, which was thwarted last weekend due to fog and rain.

I should mention that we don't actually ride the annual Tour de Blast ride because it is in May when it is still cold and wet. Instead we do our local bike club's version, which is the same route but on July 4th, when it is supposed to be warm.

One of the two big differences from last weekend's ride is that we were without support this weekend. So we each lugged a little food and Camel Baks full of water up the mountain, in addition to our water bottles.

The other big difference was the weather. Last weekend we had to cut the ride short due to fog and rain, and the ride back down to the car was very, very cold. Today, on the other hand, was about as opposite as it gets. Started out cool enough that we decided to start with jackets on when we hit the pavement at 6:55 this morning. But it was blasting hot by the time we reached Johnston Ridge at around 11 a.m. The thermometer on my iBike, which reads 5 to 10 degrees too high because the unit is black, was reading over 100 degrees from about 10 a.m. onward.

Anyway, Amy had vaguely remembered from last year that there was a water faucet up in the Johnston Ridge parking lot, so when it was actually there upon arrival we were very pleased. And that water was nice and cold! So we restocked on water and had a little food and headed back down.

The Camel Baks started out frozen solid. They were still mostly solid ice up at Johnston Ridge. But by putting water from our water bottles into the Camel Baks a couple times it worked out just about right. We had ice cold water available all the way up to the car at 1:50 p.m. Much better than the warm stuff in my water bottle!

This route sure is nice. Can't really ask for a much better quality cycling road and somewhat limited traffic as it was a week day. Not sure what traffic is like on a weekend, but I suspect it is significantly heavier than it was today.

Oh, I almost forgot about our average speed. As we approached the end of the ride I noticed we were coming in a bit slower than our average moving speed from last year (13.7 mph vs. 13.96 mph). It was very hot today, but it was also very hot when we rode on July 4th last year. The big difference was lugging all that extra water today. I was carrying an extra 6 pounds on my back and Amy had an extra 4 pounds. With all the climbing I am pleasantly surprised we almost kept the same pace.

All in all another great day on the bike!

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