Where did you ride OUTSIDE today (2021)

I managed to make an hour and 15 minutes disappear this morning and left late to meet some mates in a local village. So had to go relatively fast into a headwind, maybe not the best recovery from yesterday. I’m glad I did though we had a really good gravel ride down to Fermyn Woods (the first time I had been there and lol, the first time my gravel bike had seen a puddle), stopping in Oundle for a coffee, before heading back to Peterborough via Warmington.



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Pikes Peak.






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Nice climb :+1:

Well done!
Andermatt is the world‘s most underrated place to ride a road bike.
I definitely need to do that loop next time I‘m there, with Nufenen still on my list.

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Your links failed to upload…
But PP is definitely on my bucketlist, well done!

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I think it’s fixed now?

Yip, nice pics :sunglasses:

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Nufenen you say… yesterday it was car free for bikes.
https://www.ochsnersport.ch/de/shop/cp/events/Ride%20the%20Alps/ridethealps-nufenen.html

Klausen will be closed for bikes in two weeks (25 Sep).
https://www.ochsnersport.ch/de/shop/cp/events/Ride%20the%20Alps/ridethealps-klausen.html

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After SBT GRVL, I took a break for about 4 weeks from training or riding hard.

My 3500 ft climb this past weekend to access some sweet descending left me realizing I need to do some training and recover lost fitness.

My planned VO2 max intervals today were interrupted by a moose on the trail. Maybe a sign that I shouldn’t be doing VO2 max intervals this time of year.

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Frogs!! The frogs!! Is the greenish brown blob in that picture one? I hope they don’t present too much of a hazard to you! It’s probably a good sign that they are still around. I bet the foxes are cute! Dog sled team is cool too! You have the best animal sightings!

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My Central Coast gravel event got postponed, again, and so I took almost 3 weeks off the bike.

Restarted yesterday with a super EZ ride. This afternoon it was 100F / 38C so another chill ride with nothing interesting in my power or route other than these turkeys:

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Speaking of turkeys a sign reminded me of a little special election today:

If you have a sense of humor take a look at some of the statements from the 46 contenders:

https://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/

Scroll down and pick a language. English PDF here: https://vig.cdn.sos.ca.gov/2021/pdf/complete-vig.pdf

“Angelyne Billboard Queen” for governor! :roll_eyes:

Good times :rofl:

Back to the topic at hand… according to Strava @Cleanneon98 has something to post. Or maybe not, the @ didn’t autocomplete :thinking:

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:laughing: I don’t know about the “best” but they are certainly safer than moose, bear, big cats, or wolves. On that last, wolves have been spotted near to the regions I ride my gravel bike, but I haven’t seen any, yet. I can’t say whether they’ve seen me. Just like when I did a lot of trail running in the Santa Monica Mountains, I can confirm only two instances that I saw a mountain lion – once I startled him as he rested in the shade and the first when he startled me during a barely-dawn run – but I don’t know how many times he, or others in other areas (namely but not only Malibu Creek Park), saw me.

No frogs in the pics above. The elusive “get” is a hedgehog. I saw more dead hedgehogs on the roadway cycling in Spain than here in Switzerland. Hmmm… here there are signs for motorists to watch for hedgehogs while Spain, at least the Valencia region, does not. Correlation? Causation? :wink:

The dog sled(ge) team is cool. There are times I intentionally seek them out. I know where he parks his trailer, (which was out of the frame to the right of the picture, a paved road with parking) so I’ll sometimes ride up there. It’s the little things…

Since I’m here, weekend pics (Saturday’s and Sunday’s gravel rides):
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Not frequently seen, but also not uncommon to see a rider with their dog on a lead. There was a bit of pavement before this track, so I’m guessing she came from there, that and I got the sense the dog was closer to a pup. I’ve seen riders crossing roadways with their dogs (sometimes two dogs) like this, which makes sense.

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The kind of traffic I don’t mind.


I love how the camera makes the track look flat(-ish) when it is not.

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Saturday was a nice day. Sunday was a bit gloomy.

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Sunday was gloomy.

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And also from the gloomy Sunday, a self-service stand, mostly for apple juice but other products too. These are honor system stands. There is no vending machine. Enter, pick, leave your money. Sometimes they have TWNT to pay electronically (think of PayPal/Venmo/AppleCash/whatever except it’s baked into the banking system and not a third-party add-on). There are plenty of flower stands & fields setup this way too. Pick your flowers, perhaps fresh from the still-growing, in the dirt plant, and leave the appropriate money.

There are things I miss from the US and there are things here that I’ll miss when I eventually (nothing is forever) return to the US.

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:heart_eyes:. I suspect that everyone must be more horse savvy on the trails there so the riders feel comfortable with the dog and horse combo. My horse and dog get along and are both super good on the trail but I would worry about an accident if my pony got scared by something or someone, which could happen easily around here.

Such beautiful pictures mountainrunner! Funny, I do not think that trail looks flat! I think it looks steep and loose, And just gorgeous! Please do keep trying for the hedgehog! I have never seen one in nature! I have also never seen a mountain lion in nature, though I also ran in the Santa Monica mountains when i was in college a million years ago. But please do not see a mountain lion. I never even really thought about mountain lions back then, but I remember many years later I heard about a woman who was killed by one and I realized how very very lucky I have been on many levels.

How is Swiss culture so lovely? Thank you so much for sharing it! I always look forward to your posts.

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Super short pre work / pre breakfast spin this morning.

Goal was to make an attempt at setting a PR time on our club’s monthly Strava segment of the month competition. Realistically I have a slim chance of getting a top 10 spot :joy:

My time set on the segment was unremarkable, only just cracking the top 30 all time, (albeit a personal PR) but I did hit a set of all time PB power numbers from 1:00 all the way through to 2:00 (738w to 559w respectively) :grinning:

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Lol, I’m still trying to find a better route to the start of the Wednesday chaingang. I got a few phone calls before I left though so I didn’t have time to recce the map and went on memory from last week. I think the right route is in there, if I don’t get lost in the continually developing housing estate that is Hampton. It made the last mile a bit of a sprint :joy:


Fortunately (or maybe not) the strongest rider wasn’t there and neither were the other strong riders which meant a comfortable night for me. I was going to substitute it for tomorrow’s work out but I don’t think it was intense enough. With the usual crew it would have been :thinking:


Lol, after their recovery I think I came back on my own slightly harder.

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More Colorado adventures! Every part of this ride made things harder than it needed to be, how did I manage to enjoy myself? LOL

https://strava.app.link/2HREPhJpAjb










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Evening ride in some fresh, clear, fall mountain air :sunglasses:.

The leaves on the Aspens are changing at 10k feet. In 1-2 weeks, all the mountains will be shades of yellow, orange and brown.

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Perfect, my nephew is getting married near Red Rock and we are going to spend some time looking around.

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A little Thursday Gravel Grind







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Who needs hills when you have headwinds?

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