Saturday ride day!  John has been the route planner this year for our rides.  He suggested a 67 mile ride since we had done 62 last week.  Sounded good to me.  We had a nice relaxing breakfast and then headed out on our route.

Big loop-de-loop ride.  Packed up snacks, 2 water bottles (each), sunscreen, bike lock, tire repair stuff, etc.  I have to say, it really does make the bag heavy to have all this stuff, but thankfully it is on the back of the bike and not my shoulders!

Of course, one water bottle goes in the cage on my bike, but the other has to go in the bag.  I need a domestique to cart all this stuff for me.  We headed down to Saratoga and didn’t stop for a long time.  Almost thought about going all the 21ish miles without stopping, but then I didn’t want to bonk, so we stopped at mile 16 under what little shade we could find to have a snack.

This is along route 9 going south. Designated bike route with a wide shoulder.

It was very, very sunny – and warm!  We pedaled on down to Saratoga downtown. Mile 21.  John had a request for lunch.

Twist my arm… NOT!

That meant a good carby bagel for lunch!

We didn’t dawdle too long over lunch since we had a lot of miles planned for the day.  I put on more sunscreen and we headed back out. Our main reason for this route was to find the Zim Smith trail in Ballston Spa.  We went on this last year and it was a nice trail.  We found it around mile 30.

So much better than riding on roads.  It was actually quite uncrowded today, which was just fine by me!  Spring flowers blooming along the path.

Last year John got a flat on this path, but not today 😀

The trail crosses over the highway.  Glad we weren’t riding down there!

The Zim Smith trail is 8 miles long.  I was sad when we came up to this:

I also had a bit more to eat.

John decided we needed to find an ice cream place, and he knew of one that was not too far off of our planned route. Or so he said, anyway.  We needed to get into Mechanicsville.  It was going well until we came to some funky intersection with no stop signs or lights or street signs.  Right by this cool abandoned train station:

Couldn’t you imagine this all fixed up with a cafe and some cute gift shops in it?  It really is lovely.

It was time for a map check.  I had no idea where we were.

I am putting my trust in his mapping skills! I love when he says “If we find X street, we are golden.”  Big if LOL!

We did find find the street we needed and how could you not stop at an ice cream shop called Bubbles?  Mile  43.

They had hard frozen yogurt, which is not very common around here.  I got a couple scoops. One chocolate almond and one heath bar crunch.

The nice girl at the counter also filled up one of my water bottles and put ice in it!  I gave her a tip for that.  It was heaven to have ice water while riding.  I put a 3rd application of sunscreen on and we continued on.  This ice cream stop took us a little out of the way.  John said maybe a mile or 2.

The next chunk of riding was not very pleasant, I have to say.  There was a 6 mile stretch where the designated bike lane was torn up and we had to weave in and out of the car lane (where is is 55 mph).  Lori was so not a happy camper.  We tried to bike as fast as we could to get through that stretch.  Luckily it was not heavily traveled on a Saturday afternoon.  Never again on that road until it is paved!!

I was starting to get tired by this point.   We finally reached small town Schuylerville at mile 58.

That clunking sound?  That was me hitting a wall.  Looking at the mileage, it was going to be a bit more than a 67 miles ride.  Over 70, in fact.  I was hot and tired after that long stretch.   We drank water and had some more dried pineapple while resting, plus stretched the legs.

15 miles home, that was all we needed.  We just hit the road and kept pedaling.  I was afraid to stop because it would be hard to get started again LOL!  Going this way, the last 1/2 mile we had a choice of 3 different hills to go on.  Can’t avoid them like we can going a different way.  We both made it up the last climb.  If John hadn’t been in front of me, I probably would have stopped, but I figured if he was getting up the hill, I would.  Made it!

Ride stats:

Total miles:  72.2  (almost like running a marathon, thank you very much)

Average speed:  13 mph

Ride time: 5 hours 43 minutes

Calories burned 2100

We had protein drinks when we got home and the best shower ever!!

(my “that was a really long ride” face)

Doing this ride really solidified that I do *not* want to do another 100 mile day again.  I have done 2 and it takes so long and I don’t know what the point would be.  I like my 40-50 mile rides just fine.  😀

We went out for dinner and dessert after that.  I burned 3700 calories over the whole day and managed to take in about 3100, so I did pretty good as far as that goes.

Here is what the day looked like on my GoWear Fit.

Yeah, an active day LOL!

I hope this post comes through okay.  My blog is being upgraded to a new server, so hopefully that will solve some of the issues my blog has had lately.  If it goes down in the next day or 2, that is why.