Monday, April 21, 2014

Dairy Roubaix 2014

Dougway Rd.
This is a fun one down in Grant County, Wisco. Starts in Wyalusing state park near the confluence of the Wisconsin and Mississippi rivers and goes south along the Mighty Muddy through the driftless. Not all gravel. Mighty hilly.

Photo photos over on the Flix.

Monday, April 14, 2014

Sunup to Sundown Training, Part Two

Snow
Because it worked so well last year, Steve, Nate, Tyler and I did a long spring training ride that began before sunup and went almost 150 miles to sundown. This time was a ride down the Badger State Trail to Illinois. It had been a long winter and there was still some ice in the tunnel and snow on the trail in the highlands north of Monroe. The weather had been threatening all morning and a severe thunderstorm hit us just south of Monroe, forcing us to hide out at Clarno lumber until it passed. Good thing, because it hailed like crazy.

Rain
Back underway, we crossed the border into Illinois and the Badger became the Jane Addams Trail. Hail lay like snow on the bridges especially, calling for a little extra caution, but the sun was out and we were making time again.

We had lunch at a Mexican place named Amigo's in Freeport, checked out the new bike shop downtown and were back underway. Picked up some fine Illinois pavements and gravels northbound and even found some surprise Wisco gravel north of the border. Rode a little bit of the Sugar River Trail, but cut some of it off short in the interest of making up some of the time lost to the thunderstorm.

...
Stopped for a snack at a C-store in Oregon and followed our well-worn route back into Madison, dodging lightning bolts as we rolled in through Nine Springs and across the causeway.

Return to Madison
You know where to find the pix.