A record-breaking April ride

With the weather of Spring 2010 dramatically better than last year's, I continue to set new records for April mileage.

Since I worked on Saturday, April 17th, I decided in advance to take a vacation day on Monday, April 19th, thereby giving me two possible riding days that weekend. Since the weather forecast predicted a warmer day on Monday, my plan was to ride a relatively short ride on Sunday -- basically to keep myself in shape and add a few miles to my total -- and then stage a longer route on Monday. Little did I know how long it would be.

On Sunday, April 18th, with temperatures hovering around 50, I set out around 3:30 for what would be a modest ride of 13.5 miles along the Bartlett and Hawk Hollow trails. Despite the fact that skies were mostly sunny, the moderate northeasterly breezes made it feel quite chilly.

The following day's ride started around 1:30. Originally, I set out simply to ride to Busse Woods and back, perhaps taking a slightly less direct route back along Schaumburg's Weathersfield Way to ease the boredom and slightly increase my mileage. Skies were partly sunny to partly cloudy with temperatures in the low to mid 50s and light easterly breezes. Thankfully, the wind was not the enemy it had been in previous rides.

I arrived at Busse Woods, completed one loop in a clockwise direction, and headed back. I felt really strong on the way back, in part because my clothing layers were perfect for conditions and because there were far less headwinds to fight than in previous outings. So I kept riding . . . to the Starbucks on Irving Park Road . . . and then continued westward on Walnut Avenue to Bartlett, where I paid a visit to the Spin Doctors Bike Shop. I turned south, and when I reached the start of the Wilcox Trail on Bartlett Road, I decided not to take the trail back home. Instead, I would push myself onward from a 30+ mile ride to a 40 mile ride. I still felt pretty strong and I was confident that I could break my own record for such a long ride so early in the season. So I continued southward along the West Branch bike trails before heading east on Lies Road and back north along Kuhn Road to home. In the end, I not only reached 40 miles, but I bested that figure by 3.7 miles. Later, I determined that this had been my third longest ride in the past three years, exceeded only by my July half-century rides of 2008 and 2009.

When it was done, I had catapulted my seasonal total to 237 miles, a figure that I didn't reach in 2007 until June 20 . . . in 2008 on May 25th (at Bike the Drive) . . . and in 2009 on May 24th (also at Bike the Drive). I don't know what the rest of my 2010 season will hold, but it is certainly off to a fantastic start!