So Saturday (8/16/2014) I decided to ride to Ringoes. Normally I lead a flat B to B+ ride (15 - 16 to 17 - 18 mph) this one ended up as 14.7 mph avg over 82.6 miles. As a flat lander I try to avoid 'real hills' like the Sourland Mountains but lets face it. It's a great riding area. Besides I don't want to exhaust my rides into South Jersey by doing the same routes over and over again.
So we left Cranbury, for Ringoes, by heading East, North, then West (Ride leader logic, must get in my miles and have rest stops every so often). We started the real hills when we cross the Griggstown Causeway (mile 31). We headed to Dutchtown Zion, boy was I out of shape and my lungs hurt at the top! I decided not to try to bomb down Lindbergh but instead cut over to Rileyville Rd. Rileyville Rd has a better surface and a better line of sight and I love to bomb down hills :-). We then stopped at the Carousel Deli in Ringoes where we met several other rides from all over. :-) We spoke with one group out of Bridgewater and talked them into looking into the Longest Day. We left the deli and proceeded to Boss Rd where we were greeted by an immediate hill and headwind and this was good as this meant we mostly had a tail wind from Hopewell to Cranbury. On Queen Rd we encountered recent chip seal (July?) and I hopped that Mt. Airy wasn't done recently also and we lucked out. The climb up Mt Airy was prefect chip seal (no loose gravel!). We turned left at the High School and rode the quiet back roads. Again we reached Rileyville Rd but this time we took it down to Hopewell (bombs away). The ride from Hopewell to Rockyhill was nice (tail wind). A stop in Kingston at the Deli/Bakery (boy were they packed) and off to a then a quick sprint down Plainsboro Rd into Cranbury.
A few weeks ago I was poking around Laura Lynch's web site: Hill Slug Chronicles. She posted a link to Ride With GPS to one of the rides we did. I took a look at the site, tried out the free part of the site and download their app. I planned out the route and it laid out the cue sheet (you need a paid account to print the cue sheet), turn by turn. Gives the elevation, grade, avg speed, the steepest grade, calories burned (I posted my weight to the site's stats) and fastest speed. Cool, too much information for a info junkie! Actually I thought the information about the grade was interesting. I used it to judge my efforts climbing (yup, flat lander). I really need to work on my climbing. ;-) I'll play with it a bit more and I'll be signing up for a subscription. Here's the link to Saturday's Cranbury-Ringoes ride.
