John’s Ramblings

My next group ride is this coming Sunday, another Cascade Training Series Ride. I volunteered to lead 3 of these rides this year. On this version, I’ll be co-leading the “Yellow” group, 12-14 mph.

Before I lead a ride, I like to ride or at least drive the course so I know where all the turns are, where any construction may be altering the route, etc. Yesterday I opted for a rest day, so I drove the first 2/3rds of Sunday’s May Valley ride.

Soon after embarking on this little drive, I realized that I was actually retracing the first 20 or so miles of a ride I did last year with my gym group. I got absolutely crushed by this route last year, blowing out all my reserves on the very first hill of the day, and having to stop 10 miles before the end. The difference between last year’s ride and this year’s version is that this year the route is longer, by maybe 20 miles. This should make for an interesting conversation with myself this week as I look forward to/dread this route.

The route itself is pretty scenic once you get off that first bugger of a hill, winding through May Valley. There’s a not-so-scenic section along Issaquah-Hobart Road with quite a bit of traffic, but then you head way east into the foothills through little ‘burgs like Kanaskat and Cumberland on your way to the Green River Gorge, and the Black Diamond Bakery. I bailed on the preview at that point due to time constraints, so I’ll have to look at the last 20 later this week.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.