Round The "10 mile" Route

Where'd The Extra Mile Go?

After yesterday's near marathon distance yesterday I heeded all website and blog advice. I reduced the distance to give everything a break and effectively had a recovery day.

Sam and I waited for the wintry weather to pass. We had a downpour of hail. Quarter sized to 1 inch hail. Over about 15 minutes. I was just so glad that we had changed the shake shingle roof a couple of years ago for a composite metal one. The clouds parted and a pleasant afternoon ensued. Sam helped me put his trailer together and to hook it onto the the hitch on my bike. With helmets on and music in my ears, we began to recreate what has become the 'regular' route.

Out to the South Valley and through the trail system to Deer Creek Canyon Road as before. This time though have all 24 gears on the bike. The Diamondback was a find. It's a hard-tail with front suspension. The thing that really attracted me to the bike was the front and rear disc brakes. It feels so much more stable going down hills than a regularly braked bike. Now with the full complement of gears, the bike can reach speeds it wasn't previously able to reach. Sam sat behind me squealing with delight. We zoomed down the hills and crested each next hill without much effort.

After leaving the canyon we headed up the dreaded hill towards Kippling and the C-470 intersection. Now, previously I had turned right into the new build area that is the southern most build out before the green belt of the Denver Botanic Gardens property. For some reason I turned left onto Kippling and not right into the housing. It might have been the traffic flow or just me being dense but I turned north and not south.

We joined the C-470 bike path and the chatter behind me stopped. I glanced behind me and the familiar sight of a small child napping in the trailer was seen. I slogged up the hill to the entrance to the valley and crossed under the highway. Once again we had made it home but this time the Garmin was telling me I had fallen short. The prior runs had come up a 10.2 miles, this one was only 8.94. Hummnn. How had I done that? Ah, by turning left and not right. Bugger. The overall time taken was 54:10 and the average pace was 6.03 minutes per mile. Definitely not stellar. Pretty poor in fact, still yesterday was well up there.