Four hills and a lap

What a fun afternoon! I worked on support car trappings this morning and early afternoon. By mid afternoon Dave and I made our way out to Forest Grove to get a bit of a preride in before the Flying Aquarians took to the road to make a few laps of Hagg Lake in the dark.

Dave and I were on the road by 5PM. We pedaled an Olson's Bike Shop favorite, Woodland Loop to start off with. The Woodland loop gives a nice hill just over half way through a 35 mile route. Not satisfied with just one hill or just 35 miles we varied from the course and rode through Laurelwood before climbing UP to Bald Peak Rd. The climb is one of the better ones around in that it reaches 18% and is more than a few miles long. We saw 2 deer on the ride up. Neither of them was too concerned with two guys wheezing their way up the hill in lycra.

We made our way to Hwy 219 then took an westerly turn onto Unger Rd and climbed up Iowa Hill. I've hit 50 on the descent of this hill several times, I was considerably slower than that going up the hill today! ;-)

We descended Iowa Hill towards Cornelius but before reaching that little town we again turned westerly, this time to climb Blooming-Fernhill. After the bigger hills earlier in the ride this didn't seem near as bad as we remembered it being!

Small though it was at only a couple of miles long it did bring our total climbing to 3152ft for the 45 miles.

We rode it fast enough (15.9 avg) that we had time to make a quick stop at Jack in the Box for a quick bite (and a chocolate shake!) before driving out to Hagg Lake to meet 2 other members of our Flying Aquarian RAO team for some night riding practice. My riding partner has never ridden at night with a support car following, and 2 of our three crew members have never supported a rider at night. It was a good chance to work out the bugs.

Lauren rode the first 10 mile lap beginning at 9:30PM. She looked every bit the ultra cyclist as she hammered out the 800 ft of climbing in the 10 mile lap of the lake. Then it was Dave and my turn. We had already pedaled a few miles and I've ridden ultra races at night twice previously so we were riding mostly to give Lauren the feel of what it will be like to ride on a two person relay team. Ride hard, rest while your partner rides, ride hard.......repeat.

Dave and I pedaled reasonably hard for old guys (18.2 mph/144 heart rate avg) and soon finished our lap.

Lauren and Tim took to the road again. Tim got a jump at the exchange and that left Lauren to pedal de facto solo on the lap. This was probably good for her as she will be out there by herself on RAO.

After some pfaffing around it was midnight and both Lauren and I want to ride early in the morning and it was still a long drive home. All involved agreed that it was a fun night.

We also figured that if we each did just three more laps it would be daylight! :-)

We are going to have so much fun on RAO!

............BIKE............LIFECYCLE.....ROLLERS....TOTAL
Today.......55................0...............0...........55
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........55...............0................0...........55
_________________________________________
TOTAL.....5311...............0..............5.........5316