Oh hey! It took me the same time to do 40 miles that it takes you to do 71 miles! 🤪

Not knocking myself though. You’ve been riding for 50 years; I’ve been riding for 10 months.

This ride was a redemption. I am so so SOOO PROUD of this ride! This was 75% gravel, with lots of climbs with grades in the TEENS that I totally owned. These stats don’t show that I climbed a 9% 1/4 mile climb with ruts that made my front tire bounce with every pedal stroke…and I did the whole thing astride the bike. There was a 18% climb on asphalt that I roared up at 10 mph, which is no small feat for someone who’s been riding less than a year. I tackled Harp Hill’s (2nd big hill at the GF) gravel twin on this ride…it was a 10-13% grade that got steeper as I climbed. Unlike Harp Hill, I did it on the bike! My bike handling has improved SO much! I can change the pages on the computer while continuing to ride. I’ll switch to high cadence at easier gears when I need a break without thinking about it. I don’t panic at long endless hills anymore. I can sustain 19 mph pedaling on roads and feel my HR *drop* (not enough roads on this route to make a dent in my average speed though.) Instead of my quads fatiguing, it’s now my hamstrings and glutes that light up. If my QL starts to get pissed, I can now transfer the effort to my left glute medius and lower abs. (Learned that today!) I maintained a 15 mph average pedaling while riding next to a highway (Berlin Pike on the map.) It was nerve-wracking with cars flying 6” from my left shoulder at 60 mph, but I stayed straight and true until our turn finally came up. Mentally I would not have been able to pull that off 6 months ago.

Gravel is truly the bastard child of road cycling and MTB, and it’s tougher than both. Loudoun County gravel is tamer than PA (I’ve ridden PA gravel on horseback) but it’s still no walk in the park. The ruts, the potholes, the sandy sections, the chunky sections, the areas where the dappled shadows from the trees perfectly camouflage the potholes, the washouts from the recent rain. The flat roads are great - they ride fast, almost like asphalt, so long as they don’t have surprise potholes, but the more convex roads are a bitch. The great thing about today is that with all the recent rain AND wind, the conditions were perfect: just damp enough to limit dust, but not enough to make it slippery in the smoother sections.

This loop had some of the same tough sections from the last gravel ride…I rode ALL the sections that I had to walk last time. It was 1000% a redemption.

I’ll post more thoughts on the other app as I work on my analysis. 😄

Very nice!