Today was going to be a “boring” ride around Lake Zurich for a TR threshold workout. However, being the impressionable young man that I am, when I saw a post elsewhere on this forum from @windwarrior about going epic, I decided to take the gravel bike instead of the road bike for a specific route in the “warm” spring weather. The original plan was a just over 2hr ride but it ended up being something else, a 4.5hr 43-mile ride with 5500’ of climbing. I truncated the (oft ridden) route to get home sooner. I wanted to go shorter because I’ll be walking in a forest tomorrow shooting in a 3D archery tournament.
Notable sightings not captured on “film”: two people practicing their Alpenhorn (yes, the long Swiss horn) and a cat on a leash resting on the trail at the time I passed.
Been climbing for about 9 miles and have several more. This and the following trail pics are popular with downhilling mountain bikes and I saw many groups of this barrelling down, but fortunately not at squeeze points.
Pic before was in the forest in the near-distance.
In the forest after the picture before and on two of the calmer (less rocky and less rooty) parts and nearing the highest peak.
Past the first peak, some descending with more to come. The forest in the distance to the right with the snow is next with the next ascent and the second peak hidden by the woods.
Before ascending into the snow, there still was some, a quick pause to empty pockets of trash and there’s this wagon. The little girl in front of the horses and her family are about to get a ride in the wagon.
Ahead, the trail was covered by snow, though fortunately for only a short distance but I did have to walk the steepest part because of a lack of traction, but I was able to remount and ride more snow (carefully) before it ended (even as the path continued to climb).
The bypass was on a road and kept me on this side of the lake. The regular route puts me on the other side of the lack. The road I’m on for this pic is quite narrow, no guardrails, steep drops, and crazy to drive up in snow and rain and the dark (my daughter’s best friend lives a short distance to the left, so I’ve driven this often).
For the “where,” here’s the route. The map is zoomed out for reference to Luzern / Lucerne and Zurich. It was a good day. It was a cool day though with a generally warm sun. A long sleeve, gloves (which came off briefly near the end only to be put back on), but bib shorts.
because the 28c GP5000 or S-Works Turbo are being run at 80-90psi to avoid pinch flats. Last year I ran 32c at 65psi and almost no tire drama. Since going back to tubes 3 months ago, I now have 6 flats all on the rear tire… 3 on the 28c S-Works Turbo and 3 on the 28c GP5000. All within the first 1000 miles on each tire. Part of it is that I started riding a particular county highway & state highway to get out of flatland, and they have serious amount of road debris compared to the flat roads to the river.
of flats!
