Bike Heaven is Flat

Today we took our bikes to a park with blessedly flat roads. I would love to take my bike there every day to do my riding but I can't justify driving my bike somewhere like that. It was not a special trip today as we were already heading to the farmers market not too far from the park.

The joy of being able to coast along and leisurely pedal on flat roads was indescribable! As I mentioned in my Summer Update early last week, every single road in my area has hills - small rolling ones or big quad-killing ones. While this is great for getting an extra-hard workout, I'd like to also log more miles than is possible when all my energy is burned up trying to climb the hills.

There's one bugger that is so hard for me right now that I have to stop about two-thirds of the way up to let my pounding heart slow down enough to finish the climb. I used to just walk my bike up the last bit of the hill after having to stop but then figured out that a rest would allow me to get back on and bike the rest of the way up. It's far less embarrassing to do that than to walk the bike!

I think my policy on riding my bike in flat-road heaven will be that it's allowable if I am going to be very near the park anyway for other errands. And before you suggest that maybe I should just bike to the park, let me note that the hill getting home from there makes the ones by me look like little bumps in the road.

When people think of Arizona, I'll bet most of them think of long flat expanses of cactus-filled desert. Surprisingly, in and around Tucson, it is not flat in the least. First of all, there is a mountain range on the north side of town so much of the development in Tucson is actually in foothills and the areas south of that - full of rolling hills. More municipalities and county land wrap around the mountain range to the west and north, again resulting in rolling hills even some distance from the actual mountains. With intense summer rains, arroyos (washes) have been dug out by water draining from the higher places to lower ground. The end result for roads: big dips for big arroyos and little to medium dips for smaller ones.

Hm, this makes me wonder if the terrain is an attractive feature for the professional bicycling teams that come to train here in the winter. Obviously the mild winter weather is a factor but now I'm wondering if having long roads with lots of terrain changes is also desirable to them. Plenty of bike lanes and shoulders many places through Tucson and the county help, too, I'm sure.

In any case, my legs, lungs, and heart were all thrilled to pieces to get to relax and enjoy the ride this morning instead of feeling like they might burst!