When I looked outside today, I knew I wouldn’t end up running at lunch. It seemed like it might finally be warm enough to ride my bike outside, and that’s exactly what I did. It was still pretty cold, but not nearly cold enough to stop me from riding (and not nearly as cold as the Ice Breaker Tri a few years ago).

I rode up through The Cedars, out to Canyon, down to SR-92, over to Canyon Crest, through the round-about onto Main, up to Alpine Blvd, past the camels to the stop sign at Grove Dr. Then I turned around and went back down Alpine Blvd to Main, down to 200 N, up to Westfield, all the way to the stop sign at Suncrest Dr. Then I turned around and went back down Westfield to 200 N, over to Main, back to Canyon Crest, out to SR-92, up the big hill on Canyon, back through The Cedars, and back home. All in all, it was 16.25 miles.

I was a little surprised to see my average speed for the whole loop was 16. It certainly felt a lot slower than that… especially climbing the hills. But I’ll take it. It was so nice just to be outside today. I wish I could have ridden another hour.

I wanted to give this post the title, “Sundance”. Unfortunately, I broke down mentally, and had us turn around within a few hundred yards of reaching the famous ski resort.

We knew we needed to do a big ride today. Charmaine’s 100 mile ride is only a week away. Her training schedule suggested we do a 60 mile ride today. We were not sure how far we would really get because we were both still a bit sore from the other big rides we did this week, and from the little bit of swimming we did on Thursday. We decided to head towards Provo Canyon again. After riding up to Vivian Park, we were both feeling really good… maybe a little too good… so we decided to head on up the canyon to Sundance.

The ride along the concrete highway was really nice. There was plenty of room to ride between the washboard grading next to the lane marker and the rail at the edge of the highway. And it was so smooth. We averaged almost 20 mph all the way up the canyon from Vivan Park to the turn off for Sundance.

The entrance to the canyon said Sundance was 2 miles. The first few hundred yards were relatively flat and I found myself questioning how it could only be 2 miles to a ski area if the road was so flat. The answer came quickly. We stopped 2 or 3 times in that small section of canyon before finally giving up and turning around. When we got back home and plugged the Garmin into the computer, we saw that we had ridden more than 2 miles up the canyon (the road sign lied), and that we were just a few hundred feet from the entrance to Sundance! I feel bad for making the call to turn around. We’ll get it next time!

We rode back down Provo Canyon and out past the Mt. TImpanogos Temple down to 100 East in American Fork, stopping at a gas station along the way for a drink and some sugar. Then we rode north on 100 East (the Alpine Highway, as it is called) to 104000 North. We then cut through the neighborhood to the secret pond behind Timpanogos High School. We were pretty burned out, but managed to make it home right around the 50 mile mark on the Garmin.

In the end, we rode just over 50 miles, climbed just under 3000 feet, and spent about 4 hours in the saddle. Did I mention it was a beautiful day for a ride? It certainly was.

Tonight at about 6:00 I asked Charmaine where we would be riding. I also told her it was already 6:00. I don’t know what time we finally left, but I think it was close to 7:00. We didn’t get home until after 9:30, which is well past when the sun went down. In fact, we wound up making some route changes to avoid roads with traffic (since the visibility was down with the sun being gone).

We left our house and cruised down Canyon into Pleasant Grove. We turned and went up some road to avoid riding on State Street. We ended up coming down the 1500 East (PG) / 400 East (Lindon) / 400 West (Orem) hill… yes, that’s just one road with several coordinate-sounding names. Roads change their names and numbers around here, depending on which city you may happen to be crossing. Utah County has the worst system of roads in the nation. We turned and went up 1600 North in Orem, then down 400 East, then up 1200 North, then down 1100 East until we found the mouth of Provo Canyon.

We road up the bike trail to Vivian Park, when we realized it was already 8:00 and the sun would be going down before we made it back home. We booked it down the canyon and across Orem, but by the time we were coming down 1100 North in Pleasant Grove towards Canyon to take us home, it was too dark. We decided to cross right over Canyon and work our way up 600 West, 2600 North, and 900 West until we got back to Cedar Hills and made it home.

All in all, we did about 35 miles, and 1500 feet of total elevation gain. I don’t have excellent record keeping skills, but I think that’s our longest ride yet. I think I could probably do a 50 mile ride, but there’s no way my butt could handle being in the saddle for 100 miles yet. I don’t know how Charmaine is going to do this Little Red Riding Hood gig.

Charmaine’s 100-mile Little Red Riding Hood competition is coming right up. She can’t afford to sit around and not ride. So this morning she convinced me to ride up Suncrest with her, saying we would probably get too tired and have to turn around at some point. For some reason, I agreed. We left straight from our house, rode up into Alpine, across to Highland, and up to Suncrest. It was pretty brutal. I think we got down as slow as 4 mph at some points. I even had to stop a couple times to drink and catch my breath.

But we made it all the way to the top.

It only took a few minutes to go back down, which was so much fun. I set a new personal best for top speed with 52.4 mph. We wound our way back through Highland and Alpine before cutting across the gulley by the Country Club to ride back home.

I think our total ascent was something like 1800 feet, which is pretty good for us. The only problem now is that I don’t have any more excuses.

It’s been raining a lot. It rained so much today that we had to put our boots on and do some digging in our backyard to move a large puddle away from one of our window wells. It was tough, but doesn’t help anyone prepare for a big cycling competition in June… so we put on our biking stuff and took a quick ride around Alpine just before the sun set.

It was an easy ride, for sure. The terrain is mostly flat, and we were doing a lot more exploring than really riding. But there were a few good hills, including one at the end, when we rode up Oak Road West. I was happy to never get off my bike. In fact, for the most part, I stayed on my big front ring. I did shift down a couple times on hills, but that was it.

In the end we went 16 miles, with an average speed of 13 mph and a top speed of 38 mph (I pushed pretty hard on the slight decline between Alpine and the Walmart in Cedar Hills).