Ride Summary

Distance: 80mi
Climbing: 3114 feet
Descending: similar
Difficulty: medium-hard
Link to workout in Strava

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Met up with Paul briefly last night for a drink and to hand off my spare tire - once again I'm rolling on new, reliable rubber and don't need the spare! Also had a couple other things that he graciously offered to ferry home to portland for me. Then headed back to my place, did some laundry, packed up so I could get a quick start, and went to sleep. Woke up 1 minute before the 5:30am alarm...

Took a shower, packed a bit more, but started feeling pretty queasy so laid back down for a half hour. After a little doze I didn't really feel much better but I knew the day would be long and hot so I attempted to eat some starbucks for breakfast and was on the road around 7 (an hour later than planned). I knew this would be one of my longest day (turned out to be second longest on the trip!) and that the heat was coming back, and thus I made a concerted effort to not dilly-dally, as long as I was feeling ok, which fortunately I did as soon as I started riding. Stopped for a second breakfast after 20 miles at Tim Horton's, then had lunch at around 50 miles at A&W. I promise I do eat slow food sometimes, even if not today!

Spent most of the day on the Waterfront Trail route, some street and some path. Luckily I didn't particularly notice all the climbing - it was mostly smaller climbs that were just annoying rather than demoralizingly long, and there were even some nice rollers that I could bomb down into and then coast up the other side of without shifting way down and spin-spin-spinning. Many rollers are too spread out to carry much of the speed up the other side, but today had some good short-valley ones that let me feel like a badass pedalling uphill at 20mph for a moment (if the hill is short enough...you make it all the way up in a high gear!)

Lots of other trail users and other riders or walkers on most of the roads I was on today, so I felt like I was "in civilization" for the whole day. Sorry I didn't stop for a lot of pictures!