Distance: 30.7 mi, Climbing: 2,113 ft
Completed: 340.7 mi, 19,202 ft
The original plan for today was to ride 44 miles with 3,600 feet of climbing. That is 1,000 feet more climbing than yesterday with a similar distance. Yesterday was tough enough. Joanna and I decided to replan and ride thirty miles today and push off the remaining fourteen to tomorrow. Since we had planned only seventeen miles for tomorrow as an active recovery day, it gave us two more manageable back-to-back thirty-mile days.
And a good thing we made the change.
I have been dealing with pain in my knee over the last year. I have seen an orthopedist and have been doing physical therapy for several months. It has been an issue playing tennis, but it has not bothered me much on the bike. Well, today my knee started hurting me on the bike. I rode the day very slowly to minimize the impact on my knee and walked the steepest of the hills. I iced my knee when we finished, and I am hoping for the best going forward. Sigh…
We spent a good part of the day riding some very busy roads with more great farm views. At one point, the route put us on an entrance ramp to a limited-access highway. I had to recheck the map as I was sure it could not be right. But, it turns out the official BicyclePA bicycle route across Pennsylvania has a two-mile stretch on a highway. Fortunately, the highway did have a big shoulder, and we were not there long. But still, there must have been a better way.
We finally got off the busy roads to climb the six-mile, 1,079-foot forested climb into Snow Shoe, Pennsylvania, where we are staying for the night. My knee fortunately held up, and we were able to slowly make our way up the climb. The final three miles into Snow Shoe was mostly downhill. We started to feel a few rain drops as we came into town. I began to ride faster hopefully to beat the rain. We were only ten minutes away. Well, about three minutes from the hotel, the skies opened, and we got drenched. If only we could have climbed the mountain a little faster.
Need to exercise the glutes! Seriously !