The fledgling bike route site Bikely provided this augmented version of the Grand Rounds National Scenic Byway. I’ve always been annoyed that the Grand Rounds is not a loop, so I’m pleased to see that someone found a good way of tying up the loose ends. So to speak. More importantly, with a few small additions it provided a lovely half-century — my first since last July!

The final tally was 52 miles at 13.1 mph. The easy pace felt good, but it made for a long (4+ hour) ride. Actually… that’s probably a good thing too, since I’m discovering more and more that I’m in very good shape energy- and endurance-wise but psychologically I’m simply not accustomed to riding for so long — another result of doing most of my Summer riding 8 miles at a time.

I like the flow of this route a lot. I rode it counter-clockwise starting at Lake Calhoun; the traffic around the lakes and on the Minnehaha Parkway kept the pace nice and relaxed for the first dozen miles, providing a good warmup and a chance to get settled in for the long haul. The next 15 miles take you from downtown St. Paul to downtown Minneapolis, and the last half of the ride provides some long, flat, and speedy sections on the Victory Memorial Parkway and around St. Louis park — after 30 very urban miles it was great to be able to put my head down for a while and just concentrate on cadence.

I enjoyed this route enough that I think I’ll do it again next weekend, with the goal of increasing my average speed over the same distance. Stay tuned!

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 27th, 2006 at 1:11 pm and is filed under Uncategorized, Minnesota, Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.