Country Roads and Unplanned Gravel Century
This case of nutter butter brought to you by…..an ice bath!
I could barely turn over the pedals yesterday thanks to a seven day block of spring break training after nearly no significant mileage all winter. The Pittsburgh forecast was a rare early March day of 60F and glorious sunshine that I desperately wanted to soak in as much as possible to explore new country roads. Enter one icy plunge the night before as a Hail Mary that my legs would recover and agree to my plan. The house’s plumbing was cold enough that I did not need to add additional ice to the ceremony. For 15 minutes I allowed my legs to remain underwater, effectively shunting the blood deep into my muscles, more efficiently repairing the tissue and encouraging the lymphatic system to remove the waste of lactic acid.
The result……the numbers speak for themselves. No idea who these legs belonged to, but they showed no signs of weariness from the previous week’s training load. I've always been a huge believer in ice baths so next time your body needs a reset give your legs 15 minutes of icy love!
The Route
I must have been an adventurous explorer in a previous life who pointed to the area on a map that read, “Dragons Be Here” and then set myself firmly in that direction. I get restless when there are blank areas on my mental map where I look at a region and cannot visualize the terrain, the vegetation, or replay my own enactment on the roads or trails. The restlessness increases 10-fold if I see a squiggly red line on Strava showing that others have ridden across these uncharted lands but I have not.
For this perfect spring day I laid out a plan to explore the roads west of the Pittsburgh Airport, and then south to Burgettstown, and then further south to Avella. I poured over existing maps and established bike routes. I asked a few questions and finally mapped a plan in Komoot.
But then I got out there and my curiosity got the best of me. It read something like:
Heart: “Ooooooooooh where does that cute little road go??”
Head: “STICK WITH THE PLAN. WE HAVE A KNOWN PLAN.”
Heart: “Oooooooh but yeah we could explore these cute unknown roads and then report back with new data.”
Head: “DATA? Did you say DATA? Let’s go forth and chart these unknown lands.”
But then those uncharted roads turn out to be many miles of gravel with sharp teeth that my brand new 23mm front tire was not prepared for. One flat is not a problem, but a second flat in a very remote location with no more spare tubes or patch kit quickly becomes a lesson in not putting yourself in situations that you cannot fix without help.
Luckily the universe had its chuckles and set me back upright with no more surprise gravel roads or flat tires the remaining 50 miles. I was sunburned and so happy. My legs reliable and strong and not ready to stop until the sun had set, but safely at home.
Epilogue
As for those uncharted roads, I spent nearly four hours the next morning updating OpenStreetMaps with road surface types of these roads and others so we’ll see if those appear in a few weeks for planning the next adventure!