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Soiled Road Chamois |
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Written by Jason Mahokey
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Sunday, 21 May 2006 |
 | | Serenity now! Farm living. Sweet! |
This past Saturday I headed out to my hometown of Scottdale, PA to use my dad's house as the launching pad for an epic road ride. The Scottdale area is loaded with roads prime for road riding and I was looking forward to riding just about all of them.
 | | Worth the 35 minute drive to my dad's for roads like this. |
I set out with a map and some tip sheets for some new roads I hoped to hit. This was good and bad. Good because I did hit some killer new roads to add to the loop, but bad because despite Googles all knowing wisdom, some of the road names were wrong, thus I didn't get to hit everything I wanted to on the ride.
 | | Not sure what's up with this face. Must be Perpetuem gas. |
Nutrition consisted of: 1 bottle of quadruple strength Perpetuem , 1 bottle of HEED , 1 CamelBack full of water, 1 flask of Hammer Gel and a Balance Bar.
After some overnight rains the day was shaping up pretty good. The sky was cloudy with some hints of sun, the temps were around 60 and the winds, although not REAL strong, were strong enough to slow the pace and howl through my ears like I was on Ice Station Zebra.
 | | Neat view of a train tracks. Gettin' all artsy on you with the B&W. |
I could tell from the start I was feeling pretty good. May have just been a little geeked to FINALLY see some sun.
Of the first 10 miles, 8 were on "new to me" pavement. Sweet! But then I started to notice that the Google map wasn't spot on with the road signs, and had to do some rerouting. Damn! Oh well I know my way around these parts, I'll make it work.
 | | You know you're in the country when the pavement turns to dirt. Nice! |
I hit a ton of roads in both Westmoreland and Fayette county, and even found myself going through Smithton, home of Stoney's Brewery, makers of bad, foul tasting beer beloved by western PA old heads, as well as former home town of Shirley "Partridge Family" Jones.
My goal for the ride; was to work on nutrition (did well) and get some big training miles in the legs with a minimum of 80 miles and a maximum of 100.
 | | You also know you're in the country with graffiti like this. |
I fell short of my max goal but ended the ride with 81.5 miles. So at least I hit my minimum. The issue wasn't my legs, or food & water, it was finding more roads! I had already done 1 BIG ass loop and part of a second, the thought of seeing some of those same roads again was a little discouraging. So I packed it in.
 | | The final mileage. Done in 4 hours 45 minutes. |
Overall, everything went according to plan. Legs were good, nutrition was good, weather was good and I had a blast riding some new roads and some old familiar ones.
Hope you all had a good weekend and got some miles in.
Later.
Jason
"The Soiled Chamois" |
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; "Serenity now! Farm living. Sweet!")
; "Worth the 35 minute drive to my dad's for roads like this.")
; "Not sure what's up with this face. Must be Perpetuem gas.")
; "Neat view of a train tracks. Gettin' all artsy on you with the B&W.")
; "You know you're in the country when the pavement turns to dirt. Nice!")
; "You also know you're in the country with graffiti like this.")
; "The final mileage. Done in 4 hours 45 minutes.")
