In honor of the individual TT yesterday I went out and ran my own little faux-TT out to the Chicago Botanical Gardens. Departing at 2:45pm, I had my 7-ish miles of city riding to do before I got to the head of the North Branch Trail. I did some very fun drafting behind a couple of slow trucks (slow for automobiles that is!) going up Kimball and drafted behind them for about a 1/2 mile each at around 30 to 32 mph! It's amazing how fast you can go in the vacuum of a large truck. Pretty fun!
Rode maybe half the ride in these new clip on bars I stuck on the Look. It's pretty easy to keep it up over 20 with those things. Steering a little tweaky, but you can do pretty reasonable turning, etc. with them. The windy asphalt trail is good fun for trying to keep the pace high. I got out to the top of the loop around the little lake up there in an hour and 15 minutes for 23.5 miles. According to my computer, average speed of 19.8 mph including city traffic. Pretty okay, I reckon.
On the way back, it started sprinkling and I rode on until it changed to a good solid drizzle, then a pretty heavy downpour. I put away my computer and iPhone and just plowed on through it. I had shoes full of water and numb hands and feet by the time I got back home, but it was a pretty fun 56-ish mile ride. Still can't emulate the heat I'll be looking at on the Hotter Than Hell ride in August, the good old midwest just won't cooperate!
Going to Madison this weekend and if the weather cooperates, I'm hoping to get a good 60 to 70 miles in on the Capitol City Trail.
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