Joel Hainley : San Francisco Bay Area Software Consultant

I went up to Lake Tahoe this weekend, with my bicycle in tow. Arrived saturday afternoon, with the beginnings of a cold setting in. Got some food, walked around a bit, then went to bed.

I woke up around 8:30am Sunday morning, my birthday, ate some breakfast, then suited up and hit the road. I’d been training for this ride for the last few months, and even though i had this nagging cold i was gonna give it my best shot. I wasn’t worried about the mileage ( 72 miles ) as much as I was worried about the altitude, and the cold bug I had picked up.

The temperature was rather low so I wore a flannel over my cycling jersey as I pedaled west out of South Lake Tahoe, CA, for a clockwise trek around the lake. I hit Emerald Bay about an hour later, and was up and over that in no time. I had a few more hills to deal with and was afraid to really push hard on the hills because I wasn’t sure what was coming, and i was still leery about the oxygen and the headcold.

After the second hour i started to feel pretty warmed up and ready to start pushing, I was averaging around 17mph through the flat areas heading into Tahoe City then hit some hills and decided to start pushing a bit. Nothing broke. So I kept at it, and was hovering around 3 hours at the 40 mile mark when Amy caught up with me.

A quick refuel, some discussion about logistics and she was off again and so was I. I found the hills I had forgotten about from the ride 23 years earlier. The climb from North Shore to hwy 50 isn’t steep but it’s a LONG sumbitch, this was the part of the ride that was nearly my undoing when I was 10 years old. I just grabbed a comfortable gear and pedaled. Not trying to break any records, just pedal.

I caught up with Amy around 55 miles into the ride, and told her to just head back into town I wouldn’t need any more refuels for the rest of the ride and she could get tickets for the comedy show that night. Quick refuel, pedal pedal pedal…

I remember thinking that the few completely flat training rides i took were good preparation for these hills, because they weren’t especially hard, but required constant pedaling. You can’t coast in these situations, just keep pedaling, it’ll be over eventually.

So I hit hwy 50 and was coasting down the road at about 40mph with no cars really passing me or anything, nothing really crazy to report about the rest of the ride. I hit some hills that required me to work a little, and hit stateline passing traffic like it was standing still ( it was ). Rolled up to the hotel room with a total riding time of 5hrs 27minutes.

I’m pretty happy with my performance, I hadn’t intended to be doing this type of riding again when I bought this bike, but it’s just sorta happened. I like to think I started riding longer distances on the weekends to make the commutes to work easier, but I think there’s a large element of enjoying riding. I’d like to try some longer distance riding at some point. Who knows, maybe next year i’ll ride to Tahoe, then ride around the lake. That could be fun.