The training for the week was pretty strenuous. I ended up with 131.47 miles and 5189.7 feet of climbing. The week started off with back to back days doing climbing repeats. I'd been looking forward to Monday's lunch time ride as I was going to tackle the hill on Adirondack Trail for the first time. I found Adirondack Trail by going down it as one of the routes I take on my commute home. The route included Far West / Laredo Norte / 360 / Adirondack / Mesa. The stats for Adirondack are as follows
| Length | .6 miles |
| Max Grade | 22.8% |
| Avg Grade | 6.8 |
| Climb(ft) | 194.7 feet |
The toughest part of Adirondack is the beginning, once you get over it the grade levels out, that is if you consider 6.8 level. I didn't find the hill too difficult. In fact I had to keep shifting near the top so I could keep my power at the prescribed levels for Climbing Repeats. Since it wasn't too taxing I decided to throw in Mesa. The climbing feet for the entire ride was 1484.6 feet, not bad for a ride during lunch. I followed that up with another climbing day on Tuesday. This time for my lunch hour I tackled Mesa then Far West and then back up Mesa. This ride was 1228.7 feet of climbing. On Wednesday I did OverUnders that took me up Far West to 360 all the way up to Jollyville. Of course on Thursday I raced the Kenny Hill Autoworks Crit. I didn't log any miles on Friday.
On Saturday Dan and I decided to combine 2 of the better Cedar Park routes, Parmer and Volente Circle. We met on Brushy Creek and headed up Parmer to Hwy 29 averaging 18.1 mph. At Hwy 29 we turned around to make our way over to Anderson Mill to start the Volente Circle. For the 20 miles that makes up the Volente Circle we averaged 18.3 mph. In the end we average 17.93 mph (we had a slow stretch between Parmer and Anderson Mill navigating through the neighborhoods where we average 16 mph while we chatted). The total climbing for the route was 1458.4 feet in the 50 miles for the combined route.
It was Dan's first time on the Volente Circle, he said he liked the route I liked combining 2 good routes into one to come up with something entirely new. The Volente Circle is like bacon, anything you wrap up with it will be good.
Sep 23, 2008 at 7:59 AM For your Adirondack repeats, you rode from Spicewood up Adirondack? I'm always afraid riding down Adirondack that I'll have a brake failure and not be able to stop before I cross the usually busy Spicewood intersection.
Sep 23, 2008 at 6:56 PM I've had that same worry bombing down Adirondack, the first time I went down it not only was I worried about my brakes going out, but I was being followed by a UPS truck and his breaks were squeaking as he rode his breaks down the hill. I was more worried of his breaks failing and running me over.
Sep 23, 2008 at 9:03 PM Mike, I like your new blog template.
Sep 24, 2008 at 12:34 PM Thanks Ray! I did some server cleaning I'd been putting off on updates to the blog software because it calls for a server restart and this is the busiest time of year for my CertificateCreator.com (which is on the same server), so finding a good time to restart is difficult. If I find time one of the widgets I want to develop is a banner that would rotate photos from my rides in. In case anybody is wondering the current photo is of Wire Road, which is just off of FM 1431 in Cedar Park.