I did a Tour de Folsom road ride early Saturday morning. Met up with a bunch of great guys from the Folsom Cycling Group over in Folsom and we rode counter-clockwise around Folsom Lake. Funny that they call it the Tour de Folsom when you only just glimpse the lake about 2 or 3 times while climbing Salmon Falls Road out of El Dorado Hills. It was a good ride, and the coolest thing was that the ride leader Quinn's wife met us at the top of Pilot Hill with lots of fresh fruit, power pars, coffee, ice-cold water, gatorade etc. What a great treat after climbing nearly 2000'. I was the 4th one to the top of this 5 mile climb out of about 15 guys. I think we waited nearly 45 minutes for everyone to catch up. After our little break we continued on 49 ripping a descent down to the Confluence. It's easy to outpace cars on this section of road. Then we opted to climb out of the canyon on 49 instead of Old Foresthill to cut the ride a bit short as it was as you know BLAZING HOT out there. Quinn's wife was pacing us along 49 to keep a few cars at bay, then she headed up to the top and met us again for another water bottle fill up. On the way back down Auburn Folsom Road we ripped that descent then were holding up a pretty good pace back to Folsom, when pssssst. I got a nasty cut in my rear tire. Of course the one day I foget my seat bag with spare tube & C02 is the day I flat. Luckily I was in the group and had plenty of support. Not long after changing that flat and stuffing a 1$ bill in the tire, I flatted again about 50 yards up the road. Unreal. The heat out there when you're not riding was insane! Overall it was great ride. Met some cool new people, which is always nice. Here are some geeky ride stats I recorded on my new Polar CycleComputer:
Total Mileage: 46.7
Average Speed: 16.5
Max Speed: 44.8
Ride Time: 2:50
Ascent: 3420'
Min Temp: 73F
Average Temp: 88F
Max Temp: 111F <---- yes you read that correctly, 111 on the tarmac. This was most likely radiant heat, and note, we were done just after 11AM.
Man am I thankful we have a swimming pool. Jumping in after this ride was just the ticked to cool my core body temp down and send me on my way to recovery.
