Saturday ride

Yesterday we went on a group ride again with Alex Stieda. There were 3 other men there as well - one of whom was (Senator) Grant Mitchell, who appears to be going on Stieda's trip to the Tour this year.

I got a bit discouraged that I couldn't keep up, but then remembered to tell myself that we're talking about a former pro rider and another (Mitchell) who I seem to recall has done Ironman or at least half-Ironman triathlons, so then I felt better about it (also remembering how much I've improved). I felt badly that Ed couldn't show how he could keep up to them, but he chose to ride with me instead :-) .

The "Devon hill" sounds intimidating for cycling, but it wasn't all that bad (just a bit scary coming back when that side had a bunch of gravel still, and there was a lot more traffic including big trucks and RV's). The other hill was actually steeper, according to Ed's Garmin. And, thanks to his Garmin, I don't have to plot out our route myself anymore, he can just upload it to www.motionbased.com and get a Google Earth version like the one below.

Even though I know that distances will seem longer on a bike than by car, I thought as we were riding that we should have reached Calmar already - so it was interesting to note on the map that we did actually go further west than Calmar.