100 miles

Nancy and I hit our 100 mile mark in our training. We're still way behind last year and way behind Ned with his impressive 250 miles, but we picked up the pace a bit with today's ride, averaging 12.4 mph. It helps that this ride was all on nice open road surface, closed off to cars and the weather was just perfect for riding.

We did the Art Museum loop - well not really a loop - more like up and back - twice for a total of 25 miles. We took a quick pit stop at the beautifully restored Philadelphia Water Works and took in the view across the Schuylkill of the famous Boathouse Row.


Our training is still fairly hill deficient. Neither of us had the steam to make it up the super steep hill that almost all our rides entail unless we drive to the beginning. I swear this hill is really killer even though it looks pretty in this photo. Thing is there are two more hills after you get up this! Last year we were able to do it, but we haven't even attempted it so far.


Hope everyone is having fun and we can't wait to see you all!

More Spring Training

Editorial Note: I wrote this on April 26 but never posted it, so here it is delayed...
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Hi all!

Nancy and I continued our training yesterday with a 17 mile ride around the river drives in Philly. We made a short pit stop at the Azalea Garden on the grounds of the Philly Art Museum. As a result, we decided that our theme for this year's training blog will be plants and flowers we see on our rides (to counter balance all the shots of everyone eating snacks along their rides last year!).

So, in keeping with that, here is a photo of one of the beds at the Azalea Garden. The azaleas weren't quite in bloom but the beds had lovely plantings of bulbs and other attractive annuals and perennials.