My intent today was to take my roadbike to Marymoor Park where the Grouphealth Velodrome is located and play on the track... maybe ride around the Sammamish River Trail back and forth a couple of times too. However, after getting the bike loaded up onto the Jeep, I went to turn the key only to be greeted by one crank of the engine before the instrument panel went dark. Because I'm rarely driving it and some of the onboard systems continually draw power, I usually keep the trickle charger hooked up to the battery. I guess I forgot the last time I drove it. I didn't have time to wait for the battery to even get enough of a charge to start.
So instead of doing the same tour of my plateau I did yesterday (no thanks) or going down the hill and fighting the traffic coming off the major expressways during rush hour, I instead opted to leave the roadbike on the hitch rack and hop on the MTB. I of course selected my favourite local trail (right outside my doorstep) and did a quick 5-mile loop. I decided to stick to mainly the open areas and hardpack because a thunderstorm rolled through last night and there were portions that were still a little too wet to ride on responsibly. It turned into a fast but short mainly XC ride. Oh... I also did a couple of poseur loops around my block to cool down.
My ride was only around a half-hour but it was it nice little workout.
I've been sort of monitoring this phenomenon for a while now and I notice a 2-3 MPH drop when I'm on a path as compared to when I'm on the road. This seems odd because many of the paths around here are fairly flat and the roads have some hills. Disregarding the 15MPH speed limit and even on very sparsely populated days my average speed on a bikepath is somewhere around 18MPH whereas on the road it's somewhere between 20 and 22 or even higher if the roads are flat. And yes, there's the issue of peds and slow cyclists on paths but even on those days where I encounter absolutely no one, my average seems lower. I wonder if it has to do with the surface grade differences. Maybe paths use a softer surface thus there's more rolling resistance.
I have decided to download a blogging client for my phone. This is a test to see if it actually works.
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This post was made with a trial version of BlogPlanet, a photo blog client for mobile phones. For more information visit www.blogplanet.net.