Rosedale Ride - 42 miler

The Rosedale Ride is a local ride that I like to do every year if I can. It starts not far from my house and benefits the Rosedale school. The Rosedale school is the area’s only school for children with multiple disabilities. I didn’t get to do the ride last year, but was able to at least squeeze in the 42 miler this year.

Since I wasn’t able to do a longer ride, I figured I would actually ride to the start in order to get in a few more miles. When I left my house in the morning, things were looking ok. It was a little chilly so I decided to go ahead and wear my wind jacket even though the sun was expected to pop out. I’m glad I made that decision.

Not long into my ride to the start, the fog started to set in and get pretty thick. I wasn’t overly worried about it as I was on country roads with not much traffic. However, the fog did get thicker the closer I got to the start and at one point I had water droplets hitting me in the face from the condensation of the fog. I don’t think I’ve ever ridden in fog like that.

I made it safely to the start after covering 7.28 miles in 28:24 for an average of 15.38mph.

Since I haven’t been able to ride as much as I would like this year, I was hoping that this ride would be a good one and give me some confidence heading into my half-ironman next weekend. I knew that I had to be back home by a certain time (to leave for my son’s soccer game), so I figured I would push as hard as I could.

I started at the back of the folks doing the 60+ ride so that I could leave the start line a little early. Most of the folks in this pack are strong and fast cyclists. Since there are so many at the start, you kind of get caught up in everything and at one point I noticed I was doing about 20mph. That’s not unusual for me at times, but I knew I could not sustain that over 42 miles. I was happy when the crowd thinned out and I had some space.

I did stop for a quick potty break at the second aid station, but was quickly on the road again. The fog did not let up for a long time and the temps were colder than expected. Once again, I was glad I had my jacket on.

Around mile 30 we were routed down a road that is currently being repaved. It had a layer of black top down, but was pretty rough. I lost about 2mph for that 3 mile stretch of road.

I followed the route back to my cutoff to go home and then made my turn. When I pulled into my drive I noticed I had gone 42.24 miles in 2:32:42 for an average of 16.6 mph.

Overall, I was very pleased with this ride. I was riding 16+mph with very little effort even into the wind. There was one long stretch in there where a guy even latched on and sucked on my wheel for a while because he was having a hard time. No offense guys, but anytime a guy has to draft off of me makes me happy.