53.3 today at a slow 14.3, but did get some climbing in. Hills are like mountains now after the long layoff. Hopefully, I can keep after it enough where the hills will start feeling like hills, and eventually they'll start feeling like flats again! :)

Since getting a new hardtail I don't really ride for distance. It has a 3x9 groupset so it's essentially a hybrid though with tires more suitable for gravel. So I rode on a formerly remote section of the Montour Trail in Washington county for a round trip of just under 20 miles as a maintenance run. It's a nice easy ride with no need to piggyback on local roads and deal with the harried commuters and growing population of construction vehicles.

I drove out to a remote trail head near a railroad crossing on a spot on the map labeled as Venice but "progress" is encroaching on the farmlands and construction vehicles are tearing up meadows that used to be for horses to graze on. Yesterday I had to turn around when I came up on a construction site where a new highway is cutting through near the town of MacDonald. I was hoping to walk through (as the sides said I was able to do) and then ride on another mile so I could jump on the connecting Panhandle Trail (which leads all the way west to Weirton, WV) but a construction worker actually came up to tell me to turn back.

Personally, I feel a bit sad about that. I was hoping to make it a regular ride but that construction is going to take a couple of years. I'll need to find an alternate route to jump from one trail to the other. There's a microbrewery a couple of miles to the east where my wife and I sometimes like to ride to on Saturdays during the summer. We grab a couple of glasses and hit up the food truck up front - which kind of defeats the whole purpose but at least we can easily burn it off lol!

Got in a whopping 6 miles today. Not feeling very good today for some reason. Add to that it was super windy (gusts of up to 20 MPH) and I had to use a rest room right away so I figured the planets had aligned to tell me something. Came home and and am fixing some chicken, then I'm going to lay down a bit.

I am so looking forward to that myself. There's a Daredevil Brewery about a mile from my house near the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Can't wait! https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...6077b863ac.gif

a quickie little 15-miler usual route when pressed for time.

LOL, that's a bit close but I understand. There's a tavern about a mile from our house that is accessible by bike path. Both figured heavily into our moving into the neighborhood.

Rode 30 miles today. Had to do something to make up for the pathetic 6 miles I did on Thursday. Avg speed = 15.5 MPH. Avg HR = 128.

18 km today, in the wind, so it felt like way more. This is the most I have done in over 2yrs! My last long ride was 200km from Ottawa to Montreal in Oct 2016. Seems that ride did me in and I needed a good long break??? Looking forward to getting back into the swing of things though. I've missed my rides.

Yea.

11 fast miles on the new Diverge today. My average speed just got faster.

31 miles today, with wind at 25mph (faster than me).

Good day though. Legs felt good!

42k today. Just a quick ride before the rain hit - again.

4.6 miles: One of the shift cables pulled out of the shiv on the exterior gear mesh, on my Rohloff hub.

45 miles down to Malibu and back on my "78 Peugeot. Great ride, foggy start, bright sun, 70s degrees finish, 16+ mph avg.
https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...b785fd4dc2.jpg

Magu Rock re-group.

I did just over 40 today, it was NBD!!!! Love, love, love this bike. Any concerns I had about the FutureShock were gone in the first few miles. I mostly just wanted to shake it out on one of our paved trails here, and make sure it was shifting correctly, and that I was comfortable on the bike. The shop owner did the bike fit for me, and he nailed it. I feel like the saddle is possibly a bit high, but overall I had NO issues with any kind of pain. Not bad for a first ride of 2019 after a tough winter off from most working out. I was able to get on a really good downhill to bed the new brakes, and I have to say the move to discs was a good one! My first impressions of Di2 were, as My teenage daughter used to say.."amaze-balls". Didn't take long at all to feel really comfortable with it. No more indexing my front derailleur, which is really nice. The bike felt very nimble, and with the 28's, the CG-R seatpost, and the FutureShock, the ride was so, so smooth. Literally ran over things that used to rattle fillings. And it retains a very good feel to the road. My previous Litespeed (carbon Archon C3) had a 11-28 on the back, this Roubaix has a 11-34. Wow what a difference. I was in the big ring for most of the ride, and it felt very natural. Shifts were spot-on, every time, even when climbing. 40 miles, and my hands were not at all numb, something that never happened on the old bike. Again, a very well done bike fit is everything. Ok, enough for now!!https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...fd965c8055.jpg

The Green Hornet. The bike, not me!

Love a good Specialized story! :thumb:

After closing up the office and heading home, went for a quick sprint of 17 miles in about an hour. Would've pushed for 20, but darkness got me and I didn't have my lights.

Managed to get 60k in just as the sun was starting to set.

46 miles down PCH to Malibu. Foggy, ugly gray day, threatened rain, but dry. Good ride though, couple of interesting photo ops. Did a similar ride Sunday, saw whales, no Ferrari, or cranes over head. Always something along PCH.https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...5facd3a4b1.jpg
'57 Ferrari 250GT (Tour de France?) Photo shoot south of Magu Rock.
https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...37fc85b6f3.jpg
GoPro screen grab of temporary bike lane passing under working crane moving rocks to shore up the eroded cliff alongside the highway. Pretty close. Do bike helmets qualify as nard hats?

25 miles today. Felt good. Saved up some gas for tomorrow.

25 miles so far. Came home to use the facilities and have a snack and am going back out in a few. Hope to do 15 more. :thumb:

EDIT: Got in another 15 for a total of 40 miles on the Sirrus. Avg speed = 13.4 MPH. Avg HR = 125 BPM. My HR didn't go above 140.

I rode 49 miles on the Montour and Panhandle trails yesterday in southwest PA yesterday - making it nearly to the WV border. It was a tad longer than what I'm used to but it was oddly satisfying. An ice bath and lots of hydration seem to have spared me from lingering soreness. It'll be a few days before I ride again though.

At the 20 mile mark of my ride and on a section of long downhill on asphalt I got passed by a "Fred" who blew my doors off, white hair blowing in the breeze with no helmet or water bottle. This guy was well-equipped though: he had a yellow jersey on and while I didn't get a good look at the blur that his bike was I did notice that it was shiny and quiet.

I was on the wrong bike for this type of trail. Mine is a "jack of all trades master of none" 3x9 Trek hardtail with knobby 2.2" tires that weighs all of 30 pounds with a top speed of 15 mph - which I didn't come close to yesterday. I won't divulge what my last disappointment on the scale was but suffice it to say that I require help and a lot of motivation just to get to 15 mph.

"Fred" was going well over 20mph and I felt compelled to follow just to see what he was in such a hurry for. Five miles down the road (and about a half hour later) he zipped past me again going the other direction, hair and teeth perfect white with nary a bug in his grin.

I knew that wherever he had turned around was where I needed to find. I felt giddy somehow, like how a sailor gets giddy when they see a mermaid. I won't do the math; I'm still quite spent and was never good at that sort of computation. My mind was telling me that the trail had a slight downhill grade - but my legs were telling me something else. About 20 minutes later the trail became featureless and our of boredom I quit my quest at what I hope was just a mile short.

The rest of the ride was torture. Damn that male trail mermaid! I'm not even into guys - and I can't be the only guy who rides a Trek who's been lead astray by an overly fit person wearing a yellow jersey. I just figure that people with white hair know more than I do - and if I caught him? I dunno. Maybe he'd grant me three wishes? Offer me a swig of whatever elixir gave him such vigor? The alternative could have been worse than disappointing though.

At some point when my hair turns I think enlightenment is going to coincide with a LOT of humiliation. Yesterday could have been such a day but the worst that happened was that my energy bar got mushy in my backpack and half of it fell to the ground during a rest stop (eliciting me to utter a Homer Simpson DOH!) and at about 3 miles to go until the end of my ride I ran out of water. While that could have been a bummer instead I got a lot of fresh air - or as much as you can get in an area where natural gas drills and pipeline construction is overtaking the farmland.

OTOH next weekend I'm signed up for a 25 mile urban ride in hilly and windy downtown Pittsburgh with the promise of free beer at the finish line. I know there will be many more "Freds" and the female versions (Francine?) but I don't care. Maybe it's the after effects of fatigue or the promise of alcohol talking, but I think I'm ready. I put in double the miles yesterday, even if it was straight and level for the most part with no buses or Ubers trying to run me down. I just need to wash out my hydropack and pack extra consumables so I don't run out of energy. Live and learn, right?

35k. Wanted to ride further but had to turn around due to rain. Still, I'm happy with the 35k as I managed to stay, for the most part, dry.

Only 12 miles, but... was testing out a new bike! :love: