metric century | Finding Radiance

Sunday was a day for riding. We normally long ride on Saturday, but the weather forecast was iffy (turns out it would have been fine… go figure). So, we decided to put in a lot of miles on Sunday. We almost always bike to breakfast, but we also wanted to ride to Saratoga and then figured we would just do both 😀

We left the house around 7:40 a.m. or so to go to breakfast. Nice and sunny.

You can also see the sorry state of our driveway as well. We are just going to have it torn up and repaved instead of doing it ourselves.

We arrived at Coffee Planet and had a bagel with 2 cups of coffee and read the papers.

A nice relaxing breakfast. We were putting in a lot of miles today, so there was a lot of relaxing going on. We do things at our own pace.

John and I decided to pack a lunch and head down to Saratoga. We had 11 miles of riding down at this point.

It was sunny, sunny, sunny today! I slathered on the sunscreen. Even with lots of sunscreen, I still get a little color, but it actually is light tan and not sunburn. Not to mention a million and 1 freckles, which are supposed to be cute, but I am 44.

Here was mile 13 of the second leg (mile 24 overall). Quick stop in the shade for a snack. This is a dried banana.

Kind of looks like something you would see smooshed in the road, doesn’t it? It’s like fruit leather, only just banana with no added anything. Talk about intense banana flavor! I kind of liked this. I do love dried fruit on rides because it doesn’t take up room in the tummy, but you get the fast carb hit. I can’t stomach gels, so dried fruit works really well for me.

This part of the ride is farm land. Really stinky today as well. The farmers laid manure and had dragged it all over the road. Whenever a car passed us, there was lots of manure dust. Ever try to hold your breath while riding? Doesn’t work very well. 😀

Lunch time in Saratoga at mile 34 on the day. We stopped in Congress Park at the little stone tables.

My lunch, which was a cheesy quinoa (pintrest recipe!), plus a pear and coconut water. (That’s a working carousel in the background).

My dining companion.

We also had other companions come by.

Too many people have been feeding these ducks (and heaven knows what they are feeding them). They came right up to our feet.

Plus some babies! So cute.

It felt good to rest and sit in the shade. I was the sweat queen today.

After eating, we walked around town. Thankful for this:

Downtown Saratoga is very beautiful. Old buildings mixed in with new. It is quite bustling now.

I saw these dresses in a window and loved them (the blue one the best).

I stopped in to see how much it was. $378 for this dress – and it’s cotton!

It was time to use our Groupon for froyo!

Okay, I’ll take that off John’s leg and give you a closer look.

With 60 miles on the day, I got a lot of toppings 😳 I had 3 flavors of yogurt in there: Cake batter, cookies and cream, red velvet cake. My favorite topping was the cookie dough bites!

After sitting a spell, we headed on home. I had put more sunscreen on because it was so bright and sunny. I went through 3 bottles of water today on this trip and I ran out before we got home. John gave me some of his as well.

This was around mile 42 ish?

Our usual stop point on the way home for some dried pineapple (and shade!!) I think it was here that we decided to round up the miles from a 50 odd mile day to get up to 60 on the day. We were both feeling strong. No wind, which makes a *huge* difference in the ride.

The hills were much easier without the wind: