Thursday, September 23, 2010

A maniac ride

My social bike group has rides for all levels of people on bikes. When they start getting more vertical we refer to them as a "maniac ride". Tonight's ride qualified!
23 miles with 2251 ft of climbing. Not all that bad on paper, but when you consider that there was substantial level ground then you start to get the picture.

Paul instigated the maniac rides and had a weekly maniac ride scheduled for tonight leaving from Hillsboro. With the rainy day he had no takers.

I couldn't make it to Hillsboro in time for the ride so I had scheduled a ride in the maniac tradition beginning in Tualatin. Rather than ride solo, Paul and I decided to join forces and ride my route. It was to follow a route that a friend rides with a group of his buddies. Neither Paul nor I are real fond of Stafford Road because of heavy traffic so we modified it by taking Childs Road back towards Tualatin rather than continue down Stafford Road to Borland Rd.

HERE is the route that we started with before our little modification.

The ride up Royce Way hit 31% grade for a bit, back wheels were spinning on the asphalt and front wheels were getting light. This was far from the end of the hills though. After a nicer than expected ride down Hwy 43 we turned UP Hidden Springs Rd.
Another doozy of a climb, in excess of 25% all the way up. We got a nice run down Salamo Rd then climbed again up Grapevine Rd.

Our little Childs Rd cutoff saved a few miles but still got all the hills. ;-)

And the best part? After a day of rain, we didn't have so much as a single drop!

By the way, I'm still looking for a third crew member for next weekend's Furnace Creek 508

............BIKE............LIFECYCLE.....ROLLERS....TOTAL
Today........23...............0...............0...........23
Jan........618...............0................0..........618
Feb........692...............0................0..........692
March......940...............0................5..........940
April......934...............0................0..........934
May........905...............0................0..........905
June......1152...............0................0.........1152
July......1020...............0................0.........1020
Aug.......1000...............0................0.........1000
Sept.......849...............0................0..........849
_________________________________________
TOTAL.....8128...............0..............5.........8133

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