My bike hasn’t been getting a lot of love since I moved to Seattle. Bike commuting in the summer, mostly, but not many long rides. No touring.
To charge things up this year, I decided we should do the STP in the summer. And we will. But registering for that led to registering for the training ride, the Flying Wheels. That then led to registering the Tour de Blast. And Knox went so far as to sign up for the RAMROD (yikes!). As a result, we have a biking summer sketched out. We’ve never been into organized rides, so we’ll see how fun they are.
To prepare for these events, we’ve started going on longer bike rides after work–typically 30 to 40 miles, which is not really long in the world of touring. What we’re really jonesing to do is go on another bona fide bike tour, where you cover real distance over the span of days. That is unlikely to happen this summer, as I’m saving my vacation time for other trips. What we can do, however, is weekend mini-tours. And that’s exactly what we did this weekend, driving up to Wenatchee and doing a 76-mile bike tour to Lake Chelan and back.
Oh, it was glorious! Like water to parched lips, this ride reminded me of the sheer joy of feeling the sun on my skin, the wind in my hair, and the pedals underfoot as the world slowly changed around me! So good for the soul!
On the technical side, I was intrigued to confirm what I’ve been noticing this season: my riding style has definitely changed from what it was when I started biking five years ago. It used to be that I would try to ride fast all the time, sprinting up segments of hills and then stopping to pant before continuing up. Now, I seem to have a better pace, where I can gauge the right steady effort to get me to the top, and beyond, without needing to stop to catch my breath.
View Wenatchee/Lake Chelan Loop in a larger map
