When riding the Macomb Orchard Trail, I’m finding that I prefer starting out at the 25 Mile and Shelby intersection, not the traditional Dequinder trailhead and Onyx parking lot. Particularly with riding after work, this eliminates the need to cross two busy roads during peak traffic and makes the drive from home quite a bit easier.
Needing to do a bit of a shakedown ride on the Jamis Nova before shipping it off to San Francisco I decided to ride pavement to keep it clean, and this ended up being a really nice time. Rode out to Richmond first, trying to keep my heart rate in Zone 2 and cadence between 90 and 100 RPM. This worked fairly well, and after returning to the 25 Mile and Shelby intersection I carried on to the trail head at Dequinder and back, using this as a cool-down so my legs wouldn’t get immediately sore after stopping.
Here is the Strava data for this ride. There was no stopping save for traffic and a brief break to urinate. Even the Richmond end was a gentle loop around the paved circle at the end before heading back. This felt good, and once I got to the car I could have continued on quite a bit further, but with the sun being down and serious cold for this time of the year (mid-40s) setting in I was ready to be done.
The bike behaved almost fine, but I’ve got a little bit of drivetrain adjusting to do (and another test ride) before it gets packed up. Things were mostly fine, but somewhere around the middle of the cassette the chain wouldn’t shift smoothly, so I need to check the derailleur hanger and give things a final tweak.
This evening’s weather was almost perfect for riding. By wearing knickers I was quite comfortable, although I could have used slightly heavier gloves as post-ride I was having difficulty using my phone and signing the receipt for dinner.
This was a good ride.