Eventful Day!

Even though I ordinarily would rest today, since I rode Sunday and Tuesday, I decided to go ahead and test myself with a longer ride.  After all, today looked to be the last really nice day for awhile and I needed to see what I had in the tank.  Although I only rode 12.5 miles Sunday and 10.5 yesterday, I thought I could handle a higher mileage day.

My first thought was to ride 30 plus miles on the Interurban Road, but elected, due to the boring straight out and straight back route, to go to the Smithville Trail around the lake.  Sure glad I did!

I knew my target was to go over 30 miles, but wasn't sure just how much over I could handle right now if that! I began my ride by heading across the bridge to the Bone Bender trail.  The wind was a little stiff and it seem kind of chilly.  However, I knew that it would improve as I warmed up.  About two miles into the ride two deer ran across the trail about 40 feet in front of me.  Not unusual to see plenty of deer around the lake.  However, it sure was unusual to have two geese fly across the path at eye level about 8 feet in front of me.  I was coming around a corner and a large evergreen tree was blocking my vision on the right.  I heard the geese, but assumed they were higher in the air.  Now, I've been goosed before, but never in the face!  Pretty darn close!

 It was just another two miles in to my ride when I saw a red fox run into the forest.  This is the second time I saw a red fox at Smithville lake.  I made my turnaround at eight miles into the ride and headed back to my starting point.  As I made a right hand turn and headed down an incline I almost ran over a 4' to 5' garter snake!  If he wasn't in a double S serpentine position I would have ran over him.  Fortunately, for me and snake, I was on the right hand side of the trail to avoid any possible riders or walker coming the opposite direction.   The good news is, this time I remembered my phone/camera and stopped about 25 feet past the snake.  I put the kick stand down and walked back to where the snake was, but by the time I got there snakey was gone!  Phooey!  I did happed to come across a turtle on the trail which was a first.

I crossed the bridge and headed back to the car, stopped for a swig of water, a Cliff Bar and headed back down the Anita Gorman part of the trail.  For some reason, I just started feeling really good and decided to start pushing the pace.  I was cranking it pretty good all the way to the turnaround.  I only stopped just long enough to get a fast swig of water and headed back to the car.  I kept checking my Garmin and I was clocking a pretty fast pace.  I wanted to keep pushing the pace until I just couldn't stand it anymore.  However, although I was really feeling it in my quads and the back of my arms, I didn't let up.

I ended up riding a total of exactly 34 miles at a 12.6 mph pace.  I know that doesn't sound very fast, but this is a very windy trail with some long uphill grinders.  Besides, my first eight miles were at a warmup pace!

Starting to feel very confident about longer rides in the future!