I chose to ride on the New River Trail in Va to do a longish test ride on the new bike. It's flattish with no cars so a good place to experiment with the fit. I rode for about 3 hours and my wife joined me for the last 2 hours. We needed two vehicles which worked out great for us as she was heading that direction anyway. The first direction I rode was into a good headwind and at a slight uphill grade of 1-2% which was a great workout!!!
The only tweak I made was to rotate the bars up about 1-2 mm so my hands felt more flat on the hoods of the shifters. Needless to say it's a very nice riding bike.
The New River Trail is a rails to trail path. It is about 55 miles in length and runs from Pulaski to Galax, with a 5 mile side spur to Fries. At some point I plan to do the entire trail out and back in one day, but I didn't have time to do that this week. It mostly follow along the New River and it about 20 minutes north of the NC/Va state line. It actually crosses under I77.
The path is for cycling, hiking and horses. It's a mix of crushed stone and dirt. I will say that when I was going over hoof prints I definitely noticed it. My wife mentioned the same thing.
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