Evan Dodds – Non-work-related blog

In my continuing effort to make use of my new bike, I decided to spend my Sunday morning riding the whole way up and over down and around the two lakes (Washington and Sammamish). Now, this turned out to be a bit optimistic, as this would have been a VERY long bike ride indeed!

In any case, I *DID* do about half of it. I went up along the Burke Gilman trail, over the top of Lake Washington and then back down to Redmond along the Sammamish River Trail. A total of about 29 miles on that side of the map. Then I caught the bus from the Bear Creek P&R (got some practice loading and unloading my bike, along with being totally paranoid for the whole 45 minute busride that it was going to fall off!). I ended up at 5th and Jackson and did another mile and a half up the Jackson St hill back to the house.

I also forgot (or, rather, don’t know how) to reset the Garmin so the map looks a little silly connecting from far NorthEast Redmond down to South Seattle via “as the crow flies”.

But, all in all a great bike ride. I am proud (and also a little bit embarrassed) to point out that I “biked a marathon in olympic time”. And yes, I do mean that the first 26.2 miles I biked equate to the mileage of a marathon in just over 2 hours, so right on olympic pace. I can’t imagine how those folks RUN that fast for 2+ hours. Un… believable! I suppose it’s good that I was able to keep at 13+ mph pace for two hours on mostly flat/level!

Here’s the map (click the large thumbnail for an even bigger view):

And, of course, as always… I learned some new stuff:

1. The little road where 26th Ave says that it dead-ends which I blogged about last time really is a dead end. But only for cars. If you are biking you can carry your bike on a wooded path about 100 yards or so to a long, descending staircase and then you’re back out on the road on the other side. Yay, shortcut to avoid hills!
2. A consistent theme on this bike ride (since it was my first time on many of these trails) is VERY POOR SIGNAGE. When you’ve been placing regular signs telling bicyclists to go straight, to turn, to turn again, etc… you can’t suddenly NOT have a sign when another turn is required! I had to backtrack a ways to get over to Montlake and the stadium area after the signs suddenly stopped directing me and I ignorantly kept on going (now, the wrong way). I hit this a few times later on too on the trails (particularly Sammamish River Trail) where there was a choice to be made on which way to go, and no sign to tell me which was the right one. Frustrating!
3. Toward the end of my ride I hit a brick wall. Not literally, of course, but I had just overestimated my stamina for long, hard bike rides without substantial training. I decided that I was going to catch the bus home instead of doing the whole (probably 45+ mile) ride around the lakes. I started to get really tired, and really hungry. And after finishing “my marathon” I took about a 20 minute “nap” on a conveniently located park bench along the trail. Seriously. I was totally zonked. Lesson learned, I can’t just go out and ride 45+ miles without any training, even if I had a good breakfast.
4. I had a nice (big) lunch in Redmond and then I went a-looking for the Bear Creek P&R so I could catch the 545. It worked out ok, and now I know where it is, but it was a bit of a pain to find and it caused me to miss an earlier bus. So I got to wait 20 mins for the next one once I finally got there. I probably should have looked first to realize that the 545 stops lots of places in Redmond, including the Redmond P&R. Oh well, but the good news was that by putting my bike on the bus right at the start of the route (on a Sunday, no less), there was no big deal about slowing down the bus by putting on a bike, etc.
5. Then I flew, like an Eagle, across the span of Redmond to downtown. We didn’t even need a bridge.
6. And, of course, I had to have a fall. It wouldn’t be a bike ride without at least once not being able to unclip and falling hard. So this time it was because someone came flying around a blind corner on their bike and I had to quickly stop (then teeter, and then fall) to avoid hitting them. After picking myself (and my now scraped up knee and elbow), I apologized for the near wreck and he graciously accepted my apology. How thoughtful of him.

Total Distance (not including the bus ride) was 30.61 miles!