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).