Lake Desolation & Wind with Kyle
Kyle and I played it safe and stuck close to home for this Saturday’s ride. He was itching for some climbing and wanted to go to Wilmington, I hedged and suggest avoiding the long drive and riding locally. He agreed and we were off for a nice 67 miler.
Started at my house and immediately headed up Gailor and Strakos. Continued West down Greene and through Porters Corners to turn right onto Coy. Intersected the Lake Desolation climb about a mile up from Coy and proceeded with the day’s event.
Kyle was in good form and I was struggling to match his pace. Eventually I conceded and looked for my own pace (and never really seemed to find it). I’d like to blame the Cannondale, and Kyle tried to reassure me that, of course it was the Cannondale’s reason for my slower going.
My Trek is in the shop getting it’s free first-year’s tuneup. After 3300 miles and countless rides in the rain, it was definitely time. Especially with Anthony’s century next weekend and the double-century Lake Champlain Tour coming up in the next two weeks. My cranks had developed a horrible looking flaking problem that ended up being a defect in less than 1% of Bontrager’s production runs (or so Trek says). Thankfully, they replaced them for free along with the rings and the bottom bracket. The shop tech said that even in the last year Trek had improved the seals on the bottom bracket so I have an even better quality bottom bracket. Yay. I just want to replace parts as little as possible.
After Desolation, a quick stop at the Stewarts at the bottom of the hill to refuel. The really fast and fun part is from that Stewarts east along Middle Grove, then Daniels Rd. That’s about 10 miles of downhill and tailwind. The last tailwind we’d have pretty much for the rest of the ride.
After Daniels, a quick north on Route 9 then right onto Smith Bridge Rd and followed a meandering path east to eventually get to West River Road–one of my favorite roads in the area. I though with the prevailing winds that we have a mostly side wind and slight tailwind. Unfortunately, it was mostly side wind, yes, but much more of a headwind. WRR ended up being a challenge to maintain 15-16 mph (while normally a speed of 20-22 is an easy spin with a little tailwind).
Once we’d done our penitence on WRR Kyle was feeling pretty good and we wanted to raise the mileage tally a little so we followed the Saratoga 12/24 course (in reverse) north across Rt 197 and onto Fort Edward Rd. West onto Bluebird Rd to Route 9, South to Fortsville Rd (freshly paved this past fall) and home the usual way.
I was pretty tuckered after this event, I think it was the wind and the different bike. Oh, and the tapering riding in the last week and a half due to incessant rain and cold didn’t help either. Regardless, riding with Kyle is great because of good conversation and I think we have a pretty similar riding mentality.
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