As he burns up and down hundreds of miles of roads throughout the region, Cycle Folsom’s founder, Steve Ward, kindly captures and documents rides that he thinks would work well for our Peloton Group. His suggestion of the new Callison Road route didn’t disappoint anyone.
This ride is similar to other rides that the Peloton Group has done before, so many of us had done most of this ride. But two slight diversions, Callison Road and Shirland Tract Road, offered a pleasant, peaceful change to the traffic that would otherwise be found on Taylor Road and Folsom-Auburn Road. Mild to moderately challenging hills are scattered throughout the ride, with the toughest probably being Indian Hill. Steve was right when he said, “Callison Road is probably what adds the most charm to this ride.” But I personally thought that Shirland Tract Road was pretty cool, too.
Seven of us showed up for the Peloton ride today. Five were regulars and two are “becoming increasingly regulars.” I was impressed throughout the ride how each of us demonstrated the effects of our early season conditioning. There was pretty consistent strength, but each rider also showed great strength or sustained power at one time or another during the ride. Seeing this each weekend is what keeps motivating me to keep getting weekday rides in. Very cool to see everyone making incremental gains each week.
It didn’t hurt that Mother Nature gave us a big ol’ heaping taste of Spring today. The sky was blue, the temp was cool, but comfortable, the fields were lush green, and cherry and other fruit trees were in full bloom. I fall in love with this area all over again when I ride on a day like today.
Thanks to Lisa and Ron for their photo journalism gymnastics during this week’s ride.
We’ll post a detailed link for this ride route soon.
Some of us added a loop around Lake Natoma and an up-and-back to Beales Point to so we could tack on a few more miles (A few of us are using a “300 miles in 30 days” challenge on MapMyRide.com to help motivate us).
I’ll end my comments here with hopes that others who were on the ride will join in and share their “favorite ride highlights” comments in the comments section of this post. Please be sure to read their comments. They’re usually a hell of a lot funnier than me.