Longest bike ride of my life thus far!

Today Alicia and I biked from the apartment out to Dexter and back, going through downtown Ann Arbor and along Huron River Drive. For good reason, this road is widely known as the most scenic bike route around, and there were tons of bikes on the road today. (I learned that there are many ways to acknowledge fellow cyclists on the road: the head nod, the low left-hand wave, the left- or right-hand finger raise, or some combination of the above. I think I prefer the head nod and left-hand finger raise – it’s hard to miss and doesn’t throw off your balance.)

I had planned to do a 25-30 mile ride today, in keeping with my training schedule for One Helluva Ride. I’ve been slowly increasing my weekly mileage, and trying to increase my long rides by 5-10 miles each week. Last week we biked ~22 miles round trip, and prior to this weekend, my longest bike ride ever was 26.2 miles. (It is notable that I biked a marathon in the same time it took the women’s Olympic marathon team to run theirs. Tried not to feel demoralized… Failed…) I’d never ridden on Huron River Drive, mostly because it’s a few miles from the apartment just to get there, and I was never game for a longer ride. Until today…

The key to making this ride a success was the Dexter Bakery. A convenient and delicious destination (and having some kind of destination makes biking so much more fun), it marked the halfway point of our ride. We got some really delicious raspberry-and-cream-cheese filled muffins (which were sort of like cornbread meets cake), the perfect fuel to get us home (except for the cream cheese part, which neither of us ate).

When all was said and done, we’d ridden 28.8 miles, and happily made it home (I was only concerned for a brief stretch that I wouldn’t make it up a hill)! I stretched a bunch, and am planning to do so again later this afternoon to avoid the pain and suffering of hip flexors and quads less than 1/4 their usual length…