Thursday, March 5, 2009

Warm and breezy...

It was 72 degrees with a strong southwesterly wind when I left the house at noon on my bike. (Sustained 15-17mph winds with gusts to 20mph is called breezy here. I'm not joking. The guy on KSN this morning said it would be breezy in one sentence and mentioned 50mph gusts possible in the next.)

Anyway, my first-of-the-year bike-shorts-and-short-sleeved-jersey-only ride was wonderful! (Takes a lot less time to get ready and out the door.) I accelerated through the crowd of junior high and senior high students going to and coming back from lunch with only one minor incident. I had to brake a bit to avoid hitting a smart aleck who jumped at me. (Fitch! Don't do that again!) I rounded the corner to head out on the highway and found the wind not too bad. I dropped the hammer as they say in the biking world and in four miles had my average up to 17mph.

About four miles out is where my shelter - a few trees and such - ends. In the first mile past 4, I dropped eight tenths of a mile per hour to 16.2mph. I dropped another eight tenths in the next two miles and managed to bleed off only three tenths before I turned around. (I'm at 15.1mph now. Didn't want you to strain your brain on the math.) That's when things got interesting.

In the first mile back toward town, I gained back six of the tenths I had lost. In the next two miles I gained back an entire mile per hour. By the time I returned to four miles out I was at 17.3mph. I was at 17.5mph when I returned to the "shelter" from which I had emerged.

My ending speed? 18.0mph! My max speed was 37.5mph coming down the eastern slope of L'Alpe d'Danville. What fun! Now all I need is someone to come ride with me. Any takers?

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