China Camp Loop times two

Now that the time change occurred, I've been trying to take advantage of it. Thankfully my office is very bike friendly (since about 50% of them are cyclist as well) and I can park my bike in the office all week. On Monday I brought my bike and gear with me so that as soon as I was off the clock I could change and hit the road. Then today I did the same, except this time a coworker joined me for the ride. 

The ride isn't very difficult since it is only 13.3 miles long with only 465 feet of climbing. I don't even need to stop to rest at all. Here are my stats from the rides:

Monday, March 17th

Moving Time: 51:50 minutes

Average Speed: 15.4 mph

Max Speed: 37.6 mph

Tuesday, March 18th

Moving Time: 49:56 minutes

Average Speed: 16 mph

Max Speed: 39.4 mph

I'm happy to see a difference in speed on the second day since I was tired and almost didn't ride because of it. But my coworker was planning on joining me so I wasn't about to back out on him. I think that riding with him helped me push a little harder today as well. It is always nicer to not ride by myself. 

On Monday, the only downer on my ride was when I was about a mile away from completing it, I felt like I almost got hit by a taxi. I swear, he was within a foot of me. Thankfully I didn't get startled when he came up from behind and was so close. So today, when I was on that portion of the road I just took the lane since there isn't a designated bike lane. I figured that if I was in the middle of the lane cars would have to move into the other lane to get around me. Since there were two lanes of traffic on my side of the road I wasn't taking over the whole road. I didn't have any close calls today, so mission accomplished. 

Today, I was on the large downhill I was aiming to hit a new max speed since it is a great hill to push hard. There is only one turn and its not too sharp. At the top of the hill I got into my big gear and started to pedal as fast as I could. I got into my drops and lowered my center of gravity. Turns out I hit 39.4 mph. Not bad, but I just can't seem to break the 40 mph barrier. One of these day's I will get there, I just know it.