Epic (for me) 60 mile bike ride
Monday, June 21, 2010 at 9:34PM I don't know what possessed me, but today I ended up doing a 60 mile ride around the north end of Lake Washington and back home via I-90 (commonly known as the Lake Washington Loop).
It started out as simply a way to extend my breakfast ride by a few miles on the Burke-Gilman Trail. Once I hit Kenmore, it was clear that turning around was going to be almost the same as going down the other side of the lake, so I thought, "Why not? My calendar is unusally clear today". Unfortunately, I was just guessing at the eastside route and missed the primary and alternate "official" turn-off points. I ended up heading into Woodinville before I realized I had gone too far east (it should have been obvious when I went under I-405, but my type-A personality just ignored the signals). Even though I could have continued south through Redmond, my type-A personality also wanted me back on the original route...go figure. For those that don't know, Lake Washington is essentially in a valley between the hills of Seattle and the hills of Bellevue/Kirkland. Woodinville is in another valley on the other side of the Bellevue/Kirkland hills. In order to back to the Lake route, I had to traverse across the Bellevue/Kirkland hills.
See that spike at mile 35, that was my 0 -> 386 foot climb in a matter of 1 mile to get to the top of those Bellevue/Kirkland hills. Hardest cycling hillclimb I have done so far this year. The rest of the trip was a piece of cake compared to this. I would never think of getting off a bike and walking it up a hill, but I will admit I had to stop 1/2 way up to rest and drink water.
Total cycling time was 4 hrs. Total trip time was 6 hrs. Food intake was pretty moderate: Medium breakfast at 10mi.; coffee at 37 miles; coffee and bagel at 60 miles. I wondered how tired I would be at the end and luckily, not very. My backside was more worse-for-wear from 4 hours on a tiny bike seat (even with padded shorts).
