EPIC indeed! Did kid(s) come with?
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No kids - this was a hard route. 6-7 hours per day of riding heavily loaded bikes.
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Wow, and great pics!
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40 sec sprints
Super windy. Power wasn’t great and my legs are starting to feel a little fatigued but this last week and a half of riding outside nearly every day has been great. No complaints!
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A summer-like day so I escaped the keyboard to get some vitamin D. Six miles of bike lane and road and I was on rocky trail. After maybe 7 miles of off-road, it was about 7 miles to get home. I miss the days where 100% of the gravel ride was on trails, not less than 50%. Oh well.
It was clear and sunny. 20 miles with about 2000’ of climbing, which seemed flatish since there weren’t any solid hills, just a lot of tiny rollers.
Other bikes were spotted, but only MTBs and only going the opposite direction I was. I’m not sure who had the better idea, but I think I preferred climbing the technical stuff they were rolling down over with their shocks.
If you look closely, you’ll see I even got a bit of dirt and dust on me.
I need to change my front ring. There’s a 42 there now, which was a mistake when I went mullet with a dinner plate in the back. I had a 44 but the shop instinctively ordered a 42. I’m now spending a lot of time in the smallest cogs, whereas I spent almost no time down there before. This is a terrain issue and not because of my impressive strength. My FTP, according to TR and my own sense of vastly reduced fitness, has dropped considerably over the last 4-6 months. Because of the mixup, I have a 44 ready to install and I’ll see how that changes things.
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I’m thinking of a 44T or 46T for the flats, and maybe a 38T or keeping the 40T
New bike day, a lightly used 2022 Checkpoint SL6
fully tapered and getting ready for Costa Rica.
Oh, the bike:
Fits like a glove, my fitter said “wow that bike was built for you”
Creekside “gravel” less than a minute from my house:
New brewery, also less than a minute from house:
Elktoberfest 
beer was tasty.
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No proper workouts for me this week as I’ve been sorting stuff out but when I got of the train for the commute it was a tad chilly in the mist so I spun to warm up after a couple of minutes I decided I’d keep it up for the duration into the light 4mph head wind and finish with an VO2max burst. Its usually a standstill in town with congestion but its half term so I lost little time for a change.
I felt it tonight, the commuter bike with full mudguards and the lap top felt a right drag for the circa 5 mile climb out of town. Then I got the 4mph tail wind which had been a head wind and suddenly the legs came to life and I snagged a KOM. With a lighter bike and no laptop I’m sure someone will smash it
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Hop River Trail
Central Connecticut, USA
38 miles of blissful rail trail in central Connecticut! Fall foliage is definitely past peak and the trail was covered in leaves, but was still awesome. Some portions of the trail were 50-100 feet above the rolling terrain, which would make for a very bad day if you slipped off the side. In other locations they blasted through rock hills to keep the gradient something that the trains could climb, which was also cool to ride through two walls of rock.
This is the last ride of my two-week business trip for training and transition to the off season, but I’ve been truly blessed with great fall weather; awesome riding locations in Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Connecticut; and safe roads.
Hop River and Northern were my first two rail trail rides on the Seigla and I love it! I love getting into a set gear and cadence and just going, and 95 minutes of this ride were spent in just three gears!! Same happened on the Northern Rail Trail in New Hampshire last weekend.
There were so many cool pictures to take but I was on a bit of a timeline to get back so took a few while riding - no time for stopping!
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I went out to meet my mates at Oundle but as another mate had to turn back at floods last week , I went early so I could route round them. There was no floods. Hey ho, I had a slow pedal down to meet them on route. Lol, after a bit I passed one mate and turned but didn’t realise he was dropped, had took a short cut and wasn’t going to the cafe. So I still ended up at the cafe early. The positive it was early enough to grab seats by the windows where we could easily keep an eye on the bikes. I joined them for the 2nd half of the ride which finished at a pub. Dry October ended today 
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Lol, it was supposed to be a short recovery ride but the sun was splitting the sky this morning and it was warming up nicely! So I decided to check out the 3rd iteration of a local cafe. Within 5mins of me heading south into a stiff headwind, the skies greyed and it became quite chilly. Because my post chemo circulation is bad I didn’t realise my hands had become numb until I took the gloves off and started to fiddle with the helmet strap. At least the new cafe building is nice and the cakes as good as always 
I couldn’t face going out in the cold again so I ordered another Latte and a Scotch Egg.
With a strong tail wind I cycled back up the old A1 to Peterborough. Ive cycled the old A1 hundreds (if not thousands) of times but I am usually in a group, on a training session or in a rush to get back. But today I decided to stop at RAF Glatton at Connington.
There’s a Watertower hidden up in the trees but this site has a bit of a better picture and a bit of history
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Easy Like Sunday Morning ride, just two of us. I like the S-Works Pathfinder tires on the Checkpoint, feels a little slower than Tarmac but not too much. It was 43F / 6C so that also brings the speeds down.
Finished on the other side of the creek near my house:
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I had a recovery/ Endurance workout to do yesterday, but I decided to it on my commute today. I used ‘Alternates’ to change it to 45mins and searched around for one which had varying intervals rather than one long flat period. That brought me back to an old favourite for Outdooors, ‘Carter’.
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Lake Accotink Park Gravel Ride
Springfield, VA, USA
Loops around the lake were a bit more technical than I expected. This ended up being as much skills practice as aerobic training.
Lake, left to right
One of several stream crossings
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I haven’t done this one in over a year. Decent amount of PBs 
I think 6 separate groups of runners and hikers complimented my Timberbell.
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It rained all yesterday and whilst previous me would have went out, with the peripheral nerve damage that chemo has done I decided to turbore instead. So I was pretty desperate to get out today, Its usually a gravel ride on a Sunday, which after weeks of rain would have been a mud fest. I prepped the gravel bike and strategically placed the cleaning kit out. However, the message came through that it was to be a social road ride. That brought out quite a few folks, although two had to peel off early and before the cafe.
Lol, My group selfies are useless, the one in focus chopped 2 folk out and the blurry one still chopped someone out (all but his 
)
Double lol, I forgot to stick the garmin back on after the pub stop until it beeped for autoshut down by which time I’d done 6.9miles.
I’m glad we didn’t go off road, the winter/ commuter bike with full guards, was dirty enough so I needed that cleaning kit after all. It cleans up well though
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Got some good gravel time in with the wife today. She’s finally starting to learn to use the ebike to pull!
It was a foggy start, but eventually burnt off. I have been keto for a few months now, cutting weight, so took it pretty easy trying to make sure I didn’t burn out in the 3rd hour. It was really nice to hit the short, sharp climbs with 1/10th of my body weight missing!
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VO2max pyramid
Prince William County, VA, USA
Was supposed to be a rest day but with daylight savings, 70F, and low humidity, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to ride. I did tomorrow’s pyramid workout (two sets of two minutes each at 80%, 100%, 120%, 100%, 80%) on the rural country roads. They aren’t the prettiest of pyramids but is was awesome to get out on the road bike. I’ve been enjoying the gravel bike but it was really nice to get the roadie out again.
Sunflower silo, cows
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I was a guide for Achilles International today at the NYC marathon. After a very rough recovery from the Natchez Trace a month ago, my fitness was not where I wanted it. Thankfully my runner blew up before I did and we jogged it in. He was hoping for a 4 but ended up with a 4:52. Pretty happy to have checked off my first major since I have no interest in qualifying or lottery entering even more things.
I proceeded to begin my real race after the marathon with 3 hours to get to the airport. New redesign at Laguardia is nice but boy did I get lost and arrived at my gate two minutes before it closed. So freaking happy to have my race season concluded. Starting to toy with the idea that I’ll do the Midsouth Double.
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A bunch of hiking in Costa Rica, and incredible wildlife encounters with chacalacas, porcupine, giant and small hummingbirds, bats, agouti, flying fish, dolphins, howler monkeys, and a tarantula. Birds too numerous to track. So far a treasure trove of sightings but still hoping to see a sloth in the wild. Unfortunately most of those are videos, so sharing the giant painted sloth pic.
Tarantula thru spotting scope, about 10’ away:
Coffee, chocolate, and sugar cane tour:
We stayed in a cabin in the mountains, they have greenhouses and we picked a bunch of produce for a salad:
Staying at the coast now, kettlebell workout after hanging out at the pool:
Hot and humid outside on the fitness deck 
Going to checkout the e-bikes tomorrow. And maybe snorkel.
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I’ve always wanted to go. What an awesome vacation.
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