by Jonathan O’Keeffe » Sat Jul 11, 2015 9:55 pm
Great ride today. We started with around 15 riders from the Academy, with a route plotted out by Tim of around 55 miles with four major climbs. The first climb took us up the Chesterfield wall and then NW Road to Chesterfield center. A couple people dropped off at that point in search of a shorter day, while the rest of us enjoyed a blistering 50+ mph descent into the Chesterfield gorge, and then the long climb afterward up into Worthington. After a quick stop at the store there, several other folks headed south on 112, leaving just five of us to continue along the original route.
We took a couple dirt roads out of Worthington center to bypass a section of 143, with some nice scenery and some challenging pitches. This brought us out to 143 at East River Rd, which is a nice long flowing descent heading south towards Chester. Don had a front tire blowout during the descent, but managed to stay upright. The end of the descent brought us to the third major climb of the day, the long stretch of East River Rd heading up to Bromley Rd, which is famous as the “baked potato climb” from October’s Great River Ride.
We descended to Huntington for a stop at the country store there, and then tackled the final climb, County Rd up to Route 66. This is long and steep, and painful at the end of a ride, which is where it always seems to occur. From there, it was just the final descent back into NoHo, where we arrived around 1:30 PM. I ended up with around 58 miles at 16.2 mph, with about 5,500′ of climbing.
