Today I participated in the ninth annual Rosedale Ride.  Today’s goal:  62 miles.  Considering that I rode 56 last Saturday and covered much of the route for today’s ride, I didn’t figure there’d be a problem.  Except when we started at 8:30 this morning it was 50° and raining.  Not a drizzle, mind you, but a medium hard rain.  The first 5 miles was miserable, continually being sprayed by the water kicked up by the bicycle in front.  Riding in a group of 1,000 people is bad enough, but doing it in the rain?  Ugh!  A few riders (the smart ones, maybe?) turned around and went home, but most of us continued.  Although I did hear plenty of people say that they had planned to ride 62 miles, but with the rain they decided to do the 45 mile route instead.  My riding partner and I missed the 62-mile turnoff just after the 16 mile mark, and didn’t discover our error until we’d gone another 5 miles.  What to do?  Of course, we turned around and headed back to rejoin the 62-mile route.  The rain stopped and the clouds cleared a bit as we approached the 30-mile mark, and the rest of the ride was reasonably comfortable, except for the wet clothes.  Even with the extra 10 miles tacked on, I felt pretty good at the end of the ride, although I was happy to see it end.

I’m well into the training for my double century this fall.  I ran across a book called The Complete Book of Long-Distance Cycling, by Edmund R Burke, Ph.D. and Ed Pavelka.  If you’re interested in long-distance cycling (100 miles or more), definitely pick up this book.  It’s full of good advice on training, eating, stretching—everything you need to know.  They have the Bicycling Magazine century training program that I used last year, and a similar program for a double century.  At only 16 weeks, their double century training program is a bit too aggressive for me (they do point this out in the book).  I’m modifying their program a bit and will take 20 to 25 weeks to work up to that distance.  That’ll make it September or October before I try a double century.  It’s going to be an interesting summer.