Warmup On The Wild Goose

Out and back.

Race The Lake—my first competitive event of 2018—is now two weeks away and while I’m not worried about covering the 88-mile course I am keenly aware that I haven’t done many long rides this year. Today’s 69-mile excursion on the Wild Goose State Trail was just my 4th metric century of 2018. My longest ride was 90 miles, back on June 17. That might remain my longest ride of the year, as I’m going to be all about cyclocross once Race The Lake is behind me. But in the next two weeks I will try to do at least one more metric century. Replicating the duration of Race The Lake is more important than replicating the distance, as group dynamics and raceday adrenaline will count for plenty on August 26.

Like most recreation trails, the Wild Goose is very flat and its unpaved surface is best experienced on something other than a road bike. My Diamondback Steilacoom was the right choice today. I was tempted to use my new Trek Boone—outfitted with backup wheels and tires, of course—but I’m going to try to preserve the Boone as a race-only machine. Jeff Wren (Team Extreme) joined me today, riding the Felt that had been his cyclocross racer prior to this season. We got rained out back on August 5, 2017, when we last attempted to ride the Wild Goose, so this was our first trip on the trail since May 15, 2015.  The Wild Goose is nice, but it’s not appreciably different from the Eisenbahn State Trail here in Washington County. An annual visit is often enough.

This was a very solid 12-hour, 197-mile week. I’ll do another big block next week too, then I’ll taper for Race The Lake. I had abundant energy today—don’t be fooled by the very ordinary average speed in the graphic above—and I seem to be on the right trajectory.