Another Long Ride

This past Sunday I was out and about on the area rural roads on yet another long ride. I had a scheduled stand-alone 80 mile ride, and that's what I did. I wanted to ride some new roads, so I found a route that ventures south from Medina into Wayne County and back. After unsuccessfully trying to load the route into my Garmin 705, I jotted down turning directions onto two Post-It notes and went on my merry way.

Except for a few sections of freshly "stoned" roads, the ride went very well. The road surface didn't exactly turn from pavement into gravel, but there were enough loose stones to have me sweating. Economic problems or not, that wasn't a good show Medina County.

My knee was the other problem, although it held out until after 30 or 40 miles to really give me problems. I have no idea what's wrong with it. It starts out just fine, then the pain slowly builds, eventually giving me sharp shooting pain while climbing. Trying to climb hills is hard with only one leg.

The route was flat to rolling, which was exactly what I was looking for. I skirted a couple towns but I was mostly rolling through farm fields. After finishing this big southern loop I re-filled my bottles and headed out for my western out-and-back. I saw quite a few cyclists on the road, but they were all going the other direction. Just a nice moderately paced solo ride. In the heat.

It was another hot one Sunday. I hear we peaked at 5:00 in the afternoon, but I could certainly feel it heating up while I was out. Better cycling in it than running though! Complete ride data can be found here.

I've another big day planned for this weekend: a century ride followed by 8 to 10 miles of running. The heat's supposed to hang around and so are scattered storms. Maybe I'll have some rain to cool me off this week.