Click below to review today's route and ride stats:
More roller coasters today.
Today's ride was another tough day, the last of three sucessive high milage days with a good amount of climbing to boot. Felt much stronger today than yesterday, probably because I am aclimating better to the high humidity and heat.
We have now reached the Mississippi River (just about, we roll over it tomorrow morning) which represents about the 2/3rds point of our journey. We headed out again this morning on Route 54 (I think we have been on this since Kansas) and had some early morning climbing along the highway, although it was at very gentle grades, much welcome relief from the steep rollers we experienced on the second half of yesterday. We rode though Jefferson City, directly past the Capitol building before getting off the highway to a much calmer route 94 which headed east along the Missouri River valley. As you might expect, this section was relatively flat, however, just before lunch at the 93 mile mark, Route 94 kicked us up into the hills for four steep climbs at grades of 10 percent or more. The KATY trail, which is 225 miles long, followed most of route 94 for our trip today. We rode portions of this trail today to avoid some heavy traffic areas. This ran right along the banks of the Missori much of the way.
As we moved closer to St. Louis, there was a great deal of traffic congestion in the mid afternoon hours. We saw some roller coasters other than the hills we were climbing as we passed by Six Flags. Just as we were thinking our last 20 miles would be relatively uneventful, Lon routed us on a six mile section into the hills with some grades as high as 15%. Ouch! Not what we were hoping for after 160 miles in the saddle. We trudged up these hills at about 4 mph, basically a nice steady walking pace. Very scenic in the hills, lots of woods and meandering turns. Each time we turned a corner thinking a descent was on the way, the road kicked up again. Difficult, but lots of fun.
The next several days should be shorter and flatter as we head into Illinois and Indiana. We start riding a half hour earlier than usual, so hopefully we will have more time to unwind at the end of the day.
Here are a few pics I took today:
Leaving Osage Beach in the cool morning.
Capitol Building in Jefferson, MO
Crossing the Missouri
One of many rollers today (picture does not do it justice)
On the Katy Trail
PAC Tour is Six Flags Fun!
C'mon Jon - I'm not sure why you are complaining about climbing. The Garmin doesn't lie: 5,921 ft Elevation gain vs. 6,101 ft Elevation loss - a net downhill route!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the pictures and updates - some beautiful country you're riding through. Keep strong on the final stretch!